The Texan Part 20

"Hit 'er up a little, Bat. We'll try an' make the canyon!"

A flash of lightning illumined the valley, and glancing upward, Alice saw that the ma.s.s of black clouds was almost overhead. The horses were forced into a run as the hills reverberated to the mighty roll of the thunder. They were following a well-defined bridle trail and scarcely slackened their pace as they splashed in and out of the water where the trail crossed and recrossed the creek. One lightning flash succeeded another with such rapidity that the little valley was illuminated almost to the brightness of day, and the thunder reverberated in one continuous roar.

With the buildings of Johnson's ranch left safely behind, Alice's concern for Endicott's well-being cooled perceptibly.

"He needn't to have been so hateful, just because I laughed at him,"

she thought, and winced at a lightning flash. Her lips pressed tighter. "I hate thunder-storms--to be out in them. I bet we'll all be soaked and--" There was a blinding flash of light, the whole valley seemed filled with a writhing, twisting rope of white fire, and the deafening roar of thunder that came simultaneously with the flash made the ground tremble. It was as though the world had exploded beneath their feet, and directly in the forefront the girl saw a tall dead cottonwood split in half and topple sidewise. And in the same instant she caught a glimpse of Endicott's face. It was very white. "He's afraid," she gritted, and at the thought her own fear vanished, and in its place came a wild spirit of exhilaration. This was life. Life in the raw of which she had read and dreamed but never before experienced.

Her horse stopped abruptly. The Texan had dismounted and was pulling at the huge fragment of riven trunk that barred the trail.

"We'll have to lead 'em around through the brush, there. We can't budge this boy."

Scattering rain-drops fell--huge drops that landed with a thud and splashed broadly.

"Get out the slickers, Bat. Quick now, or we're in for a wettin'." As he spoke the man stepped to Alice's side, helped her to the ground, and loosened the pack-strings of her saddle. A moment later he held a huge oilskin of brilliant yellow, into the sleeves of which the girl thrust her arms. There was an odour as of burning sulphur and she sniffed the air as she b.u.t.toned the garment about her throat.

The Texan grinned: "Plenty close enough I'll say, when you get a whiff of the h.e.l.l-fire. Better wait here 'til I find a way through the brush. An' keep out of reach of the horse's heels with that slicker on. You can't never trust a cayuse, 'specially when they can't more'n half see. They're liable to take a crack at you for luck."

Grasping his bridle reins the Texan disappeared and by the lightning flashes she could see him forcing his way through the thicket of willows. The scattering drops changed to a heavy downpour. The moonlight had long since been obliterated and the short intervals between the lightning flashes were s.p.a.ces of intense blackness. A yellow-clad figure scrambled over the tree trunk and the cowboy took the bridle reins from her hand.

"You slip through here. I'll take your horse around."

On the other side, the cowboy a.s.sisted her to mount, and pulling his horse in beside hers, led off down the trail. The rain steadily increased in volume until the flashes of lightning showed only a grey wall of water, and the roar of it blended into the incessant roar of the thunder. The horses splashed into the creek and wallowed to their bellies in the swirling water.

The Texan leaned close and shouted to make himself heard.

"They don't make 'em any worse than this. I've be'n out in some considerable rainstorms, take it first an' last, but I never seen it come down solid before. A fish could swim anywheres through this."

"The creek is rising," answered the girl.

"Yes, an' we ain't goin' to cross it many more times. In the canyon she'll be belly-deep to a giraffe, an' we got to figure a way out of the coulee 'fore we get to it."

Alice was straining her ears to catch his words, when suddenly, above the sound of his voice, above the roar of the rain and the crash and roll of thunder, came another sound--a low, sullen growl--indefinable, ominous, terrible. The Texan, too, heard the sound and, jerking his horse to a standstill, sat listening. The sullen growl deepened into a loud rumble, indescribably horrible. Alice saw that the Texan's face was drawn into a tense, puzzled frown. A sudden fear gripped her heart. She leaned forward and the words fairly shrieked from her lips.

"It's the reservoir!"

The Texan whirled to face the others whose horses had crowded close and stood with drooping heads.

"The reservoir's let go!" he shouted, and pointed into the grey wall of water at right angles to their course. "Ride! Ride like h.e.l.l an' save yourselves! I'll look after her!" The next instant he whirled his horse against the girl's.

"Ride straight ahead!" he roared. "Give him his head an' hang on!

I'll stay at his flank, an' if you go down we'll take a chance together!"

Slipping the quirt from the horn of his saddle the cowboy brought it down across her horse's flank and the animal shot away straight into the opaque grey wall. Alice gave the horse a loose rein, set her lips, and gripped the horn of her saddle as the brute plunged on.

The valley was not wide. They had reached a point where its sides narrowed to form the mouth of the canyon. The pound of the horse's feet was lost in the t.i.tanic bombilation of the elements--the incessant crash and rumble of thunder and the ever increasing roar of rushing waters. At every jump the girl expected her frantic horse to go down, yet she was conscious of no feeling of fear. She glanced over her shoulder, but the terrific downpour acted as a curtain through which her eyes could not penetrate with the aid even of the most vivid flashes of lightning. Yet she knew that the Texan rode at her flank and that the others followed--Endicott and Bat, with his pack-horse close-snubbed to his saddle-horn. Suddenly the girl felt her horse labouring. His speed slackened perceptibly. As abruptly as it started the rain stopped; and she saw that water was swirling about his knees.

Saw also by the aid of a lightning flash that throughout its width the valley was a black sea of tossing water. Before her the bank was very close and she jerked her horse toward a point where the perpendicular sides of a cutbank gave place to a narrow plane that slanted steeply upward. It seemed to the girl that the steep ascent would be impossible for the horses but it was the only chance. She glanced backward. The Texan was close behind, and following him were the others, their horses wallowing to their bellies. She had reached the hill and so steep was its pitch that her horse seemed perpendicular to the earth's surface. She leaned over the horn and twisted her fingers into his mane as the animal, his feet clear of the water, clawed and scrambled like a cat to gain the top. Another moment and he had pulled himself over the edge and the girl leaped to the ground. The Texan had not followed to the top but had halted his horse at the edge of the water that was mounting steadily higher. Bat swung in with his pack horse and with his quirt Tex forced them up the embankment. Endicott's horse was all but swimming. The water came above the man's knees as the animal fought for footing. The Texan leaned far out and, grasping the bridle, drew him in to the bank and quirted him to the top. Then, as the three watched, he headed his own horse upward. Scarcely had the animal come clear of the water when the eager watchers saw that something was wrong.

"De cinch--she bus'!" cried the half-breed excitedly. "Dat dam' Purdy cut de cinch an' A'm trade Tex mine for ride de outlaw, an' we trade back. _Voila_!" As the man talked, he jerked the coiled rope from his saddle and rushed to the edge. Alice, too, crowded to the bank, her hands tight clenched as she saw the man, the saddle gone from under him, clinging desperately to the bridle reins, his body awash in the black waters. Saw also that his weight on the horse's head was causing the animal to quit the straight climb and to plunge and turn erratically. It was evident that both horse and rider must be hurled into the flood. The fury of the storm had pa.s.sed. The rumble of thunder was distant now. The flashes of lightning came at greater intervals, and with a pale glow instead of the dazzling brilliance of the nearer flashes. Through a great rift in the cloud-bank the moon showed, calm and serene above the mad rush of black waters.

For a single instant Alice gazed into the up-turned face of the Texan, and in that instant she saw his lips curve into the familiar cynical smile. Then he calmly let go the reins and slipped silently beneath the black water, as the released horse scrambled to the top. Beside her, Endicott uttered an oath and, tearing at the b.u.t.tons of his slicker, dashed the garment to the ground. His coat followed, and stooping he tore the shoes from his feet and poised on the very edge of the flood. With a cry she sprang to his side and gripped his arm, but without a word he shook her roughly away, and as a dark form appeared momentarily upon the surface of the flood he plunged in.

Alice and Bat watched as the moonlight showed the man swimming with strong, sure strokes toward the spot where a moment before the dark form had appeared upon the surface. Then he dived, and the swift-rushing water purled and gurgled as it closed over the spot where he had been. Rope in hand, Bat, closely followed by the girl, ran along the edge of the bank, both straining their eyes for the first sign of movement upon the surface of the flood. Would he never come up? The slope up which the horses had scrambled steepened into a perpendicular cut-bank at no great distance below, and if the current bore the two men past that point the girl knew instinctively that rescue would be impossible and they would be swept into the vortex of the canyon.

There was a cry from Bat, and Alice, struggling to keep up, caught a blur of motion upon the surface some distance below. A few steps brought them opposite to the point, where, scarcely thirty feet from the bank, two forms were struggling violently. Suddenly an arm raised high, and a doubled fist crashed squarely against the jaw of a white, upturned face. The half-breed poised an instant and threw his rope.

The wide loop fell true and a moment later Endicott succeeded in pa.s.sing it under the arms of the unconscious Texan. Then the rope drew taut and the halfbreed braced to the pull as the men were forced sh.o.r.eward by the current.

With a cry of relief, Alice rushed to the aid of the half-breed, and grasping the rope, threw her weight into the pull. But her relief was short-lived, for when the forms in the water touched sh.o.r.e it was to brush against the side of the cut-bank with tea feet of perpendicular wall above them. And worse than, that, unhardened to the wear of water, the bank was caving off in great chunks as the current gnawed at its base. A section weighing tons let go with a roar only a few yards below, and Bat and the girl worked as neither had ever worked before to tow their burden upstream to the sloping bank. But the force of the current and the conformation of the bank, which slanted outward at an angle that diminished the force of the pull by half, rendered their efforts in vain.

"You stan' back!" ordered Bat sharply, as a section of earth gave way almost beneath their feet, but the girl paid no attention, and the two redoubled their efforts.

In the water, Endicott took in the situation at a glance. He realized that the strain of the pull was more than the two could overcome.

Realized also that each moment added to the Jeopardy of the half-breed and the girl. There was one chance--and only one. Relieved of his weight, the unresisting form of the Texan could be dragged to safety--and he would take that chance.

"_Non_! _Non_!" The words were fairly hurled from the half-breed's lips, as he seemed to divine what was pa.s.sing in Endicott's mind. But Endicott gave no heed. Deliberately he let go the rope and the next moment was whirled from sight, straight toward the seething vortex of the canyon, where the moonlight revealed dimly in the distance only a wild rush of lashing waters and the thrashing limbs of uprooted trees.

CHAPTER XII

TEX DOES SOME SCOUTING

The moon hung low over the peaks to the westward when the Texan opened his eyes. For some moments he stared about him in bewilderment, his gaze travelling slowly from the slicker-clad form of the girl, who sat close beside him with her face buried in her arms, to the little group of horses that stood huddled dejectedly together. With an effort he struggled to his elbow, and at the movement, the girl raised her head and turned a very white face toward him.

Shivering with cold, the Texan raised himself to a sitting posture.

"Where's Bat?" he asked. "An' why ain't he onsaddled those horses, an'

built a fire? I'm froze stiff."

"Bat has gone to--to find Winthrop," answered the girl, with a painful catch in her voice. "He wouldn't wait, and I had no matches, and yours were all wet, and I couldn't loosen the cinches."

Tex pa.s.sed his hand over his forehead, as if trying to remember, and his fingers prodded tenderly at his jaw. "I recollect bein' in the water, an' the pilgrim was there, an' we were sc.r.a.ppin' an' he punched me in the jaw. He carries a whallop up his sleeve like the kick of a mule. But what we was sc.r.a.ppin' about, an' where he is now, an' how I come here, is somethin' I don't savvy."

Step by step the girl detailed what had happened while the Texan listened in silence. "And now," she concluded, "he's gone. Just when--" her voice broke and once more she buried her face in her arms.

Tex saw that she was sobbing silently. He felt for his "makings" and drew from his pocket a little sack of soggy tobacco and some wet papers. He returned them to his pocket and rose to his feet.

"You're cold," he said softly. "There's dry matches in the pack. I'll make a fire an' get those wet saddles off the horses."

Alice did not look up and the man busied himself with the pack. A few minutes later she felt his fingers upon her shoulder. He pointed toward a fire that crackled cheerfully from the depths of a bull pine thicket. "I fixed you up a shelter tent and spread your blankets. The tarp kep' 'em tolerable dry. Go over there an' get off those clothes.

You must be wet through--nothin' short of a divin' suit would have kep'

that rain out!"

"But----"

He forestalled the objection. "There won't be any one to bother you.

I'm goin' down the creek."

The girl noticed that his horse, saddled with Endicott's saddle stood close behind her.

"I didn't mean that!" she exclaimed. "But you are cold--chilled to the bone. You need the fire more than I do."