"Way down upon the Suwanee River,Far, far away,That's where my heart is turning ever,That's where the old folks stay.""All the world am sad and drearyEverywhere I roam.Oh, darkies, how my heart grows wearyLonging for the old folks at home."
"Way down upon the Suwanee River,Far, far away,That's where my heart is turning ever,That's where the old folks stay."
"All the world am sad and drearyEverywhere I roam.Oh, darkies, how my heart grows wearyLonging for the old folks at home."
There was something of pathos in our tones as we sang the last line. Jim had a good baritone, and Tom's voice was really a fine tenor, while mine was of a nondescript variety.
We spent hours in this cavern in singing and exploring around.
"I'll tell you what let's do," exclaimed Tom. "Let's carve our names in here."
"Good idea," I agreed.
So we went to work and in a couple of hours we had finished our task. The sandstone was soft, that is, comparatively so, and we enjoyed working in it. There was a peculiar pleasure in our quiet industry in that sheltered place away from the turmoil of the river and the lone, weird desert land through which we were traveling.
I finished my name first.
"Jo Darlington." If you ever visit that cavern, which is most improbable, you will see it there. If some future explorer, several thousand years from now chances to drop in, he will also see my name there, as durable as the stone itself.
I left the other artists at work and went out to take a look at our boat. I just stepped outside of the entrance, and at my first glance through the screen of cottonwoods I saw something that froze me in my tracks.
I made out an Indian making his way along a trail towards our boat. Who would reach it first? His purpose was evident. To reach the boat and cut it loose and drift with it into the river. Then where would we be? Stranded high and dry, with neither supplies nor guns, nor boat.
I gave one yell to the boys in the interior of the cave, and sprang forward with unleashed energy. The Indian started at the same time towards the boat. He had a clearer trail than I did, and leaped forward with the swiftness of a deer.
Never had I run for such a stake, neither brush nor logs could stop me. I tore through the bushes with tremendous speed and down the slope towards the boat I hurled myself.
But the Indian was ahead by fifty feet, and sprang on "The Captain." Then he turned towards me, throwing one hand up, exclaiming:
"How, how, Jo Darlington?"
I stopped and sat down in absolute and unbounded amazement. It was Juarez Hopkins.
"Hurry, boys," I yelled, "it's Juarez."
We gathered around him in an excited state, slapping him on the back, wringing his hand, and executing a war dance upon the deck of "The Captain." In reply to our numerous questions he told us simply of his trip in search of us with an occasional gleam of his white teeth.
He had met the captain and found out our plans, but not knowing exactly where we would start, he had determined to intercept us below, at the crossing of The Fathers.
He had worn out two bronchos, but was in good condition himself. It was by a curious accident that he had found us in the Temple canyon. I will explain how this was later.
"You look very much as you used to," said Jim, "only you have your hair cut. How were your father and mother?"
"Father and mother are very well," he said, speaking slowly and very distinctly in a low voice; there was only the slightest trace of an accent. "They grew younger when Juanita and I came home."
"How is Juanita?" inquired Tom with a deep and courteous interest.
Juarez smiled with a flash of his strong, white teeth.
"Ah, Juanita, she too is well. Very pretty girl. Tall and very strong, but no more than that like an Indian. Her eyes are blue and hair black, and her skin it is not bad either. Juanita she likewise is a child. She sent her love and thanks to the three boys who rescued her. How is that for high?"
We laughed. His grafting of a slang phrase on his precise English was amusing.
"My mother love Juanita very much. She is much comfortable for her. I tell father and mother I stay for awhile on the farm, but by and by leave and go with Jim and Tom and Jo. Out in the mountains, over the plains, follow the trail once more. See?"
"Yes, perfectly, Juarez," I said.
"I tell my own people I cannot sleep under a roof. I die, no air. I cannot drive fat, slow horses to town. I cannot pitch hay into a wagon or dig up the potato from the ground. No, No! They understand. I have one letter for you all from father and mother."
He extracted it from the inside of his shirt where it was fastened. We read it, sitting on the top of our ship's cabin. It contained many messages of good will for us and of affection.
They said that they were perfectly reconciled to having their son Juarez traveling with us. That they realized that he could not be contented on a farm after having spent nearly all his life among the Indians. Also we must be sure to visit them before we returned East.
It was a good letter and we appreciated every word of it. We seemed united with the outside world once more, and we felt doubly fortified to have our tried comrade, Juarez, with us. There had been, as you remember, a natural friendship between Juarez and Jim. But now, Juarez accepted both Tom and me as comrades, something he had not done before, which we remembered, if you do not.
In appearance, Juarez was no longer the Indian, except for the lithe grace of his movements and his tireless endurance. There was also a certain dignity of reticence that he had derived from them. His dark hair was neatly cut and he wore a grey flannel shirt and blue trousers. The greatest change was in his eyes. They were of a mild brown and had lost that black fierceness of expression and sullen distrust that had haunted them when we had first met him on the captain's plateau, when his sister Juanita was still a captive in the power of Eagle Feather.
"What do you think of our boat, Juarez?"
"You make her?" he inquired.
"Sure," we replied.
He looked "The Captain" over from stem to stern, missing no part of its construction under Jim's careful explanation.
"Ah," he said finally, with a smile. "She is a Jim Dandy."
We grinned our appreciation of his pun.
"You are a real American," said Tom, "or you would have never thought of that."
"How did you happen to strike us here?" asked Jim, "instead of at the crossing of The Fathers as you had first planned."
"I wanted to make a search for some treasure that lies in this canyon," he replied. "I have often heard of it through the captives we took from the southern tribe, the Pai Ute, who in turn had got it from some of these Indians who build houses in the cliffs.
"I have it down in paper as much as I remember. We will look together if you agree."
"There will be no trouble about that, Juarez," we said.
He took out a worn piece of paper and studied it carefully.
"It is gold nuggets, bracelets and gems and one gold cross taken from the early priests by the Indians.
"By tradition it was left hidden in the canyon.
"It is three curves in the river below a great cavern."
"There's the cavern, Juarez, up there," said Jim. "It is five hundred feet in width and two hundred feet high."
"So far, so well," he replied. "At the third curve you land on the west bank, you follow up a narrow slit in the wall of the canyon. Beyond it upon a rock, there is a natural formation like this sign O. That is a symbol for the Indians of this region. It means a great deal to them, but nothing to me." There was a note of contempt in his voice.
"It is in the locality of this marked rock that the Indian treasure is hidden. There you have it."
"But not the treasure, not yet," I said. "I suppose that it is guarded by some dragon or some evil spell."
"They say so. If the treasure is not removed and we get near it, we will be struck by blue lightning from red clouds and our bones will be crushed by some terrible beast or devil; I know not which."
"There is the dragon that guards this treasure," said Jim, pointing to the river, "and it is certainly a terrible one."
"How much is it all worth?" asked the calculating Tom.
"How can I tell?" replied Juarez. "Many men have sold their lives for it. How much is a man worth, eh? Count it that way. The many strange jewels, three big handfuls, are thousands and thousands of money, besides the gold. The box itself is a richness—beaten gold with gems all over it, so they say."
Tom stood with his mouth open and his eyes shining. Jim laughed at him.
"I bet you will make a regular old shylock when you grow up. You are money hungry like all those eastern grubs. I tell you now that you and Jo only have a third of our share between you, as you happen to be twins. You see, I'm the oldest, therefore I get two-thirds."
I grinned, because I knew that Jim cared as little for money as it was possible to. In fact, he was entirely indifferent to it. Tom should have known this. But money was, with him, too sacred and serious a matter to be taken lightly.
He grew white with anger, and picking up a stick made for Jim to strike him. Juarez stepped between them.
"You excite, hot under the collar. You sit down."
Tom did so suddenly, and with emphasis under Juarez guiding hand.
"Now you give me that stick?" Tom did so and Juarez tossed it ashore. That was all. Jim said nothing and paid no attention to Tom's attack.
Tom felt ashamed of himself, as he had every reason to, and for some time thereafter was a most amiable person, and Jim did not aggravate him.
"We will get an early start in the morning," announced Jim, "and drop down the river and try our luck in looking for this bunch of valuables."
"How did these Indians get hold of so much, Juarez?" I asked, "especially the gems."
"There are a good many stones to be picked up in the southwest," he replied, "and this collection has been growing for centuries."
"But the gold box," I said. "They did not make it, I suppose."
"No," he replied. "They captured it, that is the Indians in the early days, from the Hispanooles. And there were a lot of these jewels in it as well as the gold."
"Well, if somebody hasn't robbed the bank," said Jim, "we will soon be wearing diamonds."
"We will look like a sporty alderman," I said, "when we get rich."
"I expect to wear diamonds in my front teeth," said Jim, "if I can't dispose of them in any other way."
"We can buy a steam yacht, too," I said.
"Not for me," remarked Jim. "'The Captain' is a good enough boat for me. Can you row, Juarez?"
"Ah, yes, I think so some, yes. I paddle a canoe many, many times."
"This is no canoe, but I know you will do," replied Jim. "It's mighty lucky you dropped in on us when you did. Tom has had a sore leg ever since an Indian back there in another canyon dropped a rock on him."
"It was luck that Juarez did come along now," I joined in. "We will need him bad enough when we come to the 'Gorge of the Grand Canyon.'"
"That's the place!" said Jim. "I have read that it is over six thousand feet down from the rim of the canyon to the river."
"Straight up and down?" asked Tom.
"No," replied Jim. "It's nearly thirteen miles across from rim to rim and the precipitous walls of the gorge are only about fifteen hundred feet."
"I have heard of it," said Juarez. "All the Indians know something about it. Some say nobody can go through it alive. That the waters go down into the heart of the earth. It is very wonderful, me see. To-morrow we hunt for the treasure."
Tom was the first awake the next morning. The reason is evident already to the mind of the acute reader. Tom wanted to get on the trail of the buried treasure. We were not entirely indifferent ourselves.
As soon as breakfast was finished we got on the boat and pulled out, leaving a camping place which we always remembered with pleasure.
The charm of the place was in the Temple, where we had sung the old songs. In the evening, too, we had given a special concert in honor of Juarez.
We dragged some big pine logs into the interior, and soon had a great fire started in the center of the Temple. It was a really beautiful sight as the flames leaped upward toward the dome, and the auditorium, with its red walls, showed clearly in the ruddy light, and there was the drapery of the shadows gathered in the corners that moved as do the curtains in a gentle breeze.
It was weird, too, especially when Juarez gave us some of the old Indian chants and war songs. The sounds seemed to summon all the savagery of the southwest to the Temple.
It was easy to imagine it as a great council chamber in which the chiefs were deliberating on matters of grave importance. So it seemed when Juarez chanted.
Finally we had some rollicking negro songs, and ended up with the Star Spangled Banner, sung with tremendous enthusiasm by the entire congregation, and it was stirring, too, as our voices swelled in that great Temple.
No wonder that we looked back with regret as we shoved off into the turbulent river. We were at our usual positions as our boat took to the current.
Juarez was our guest, and we would not let him row, not the first day, but we promised that he would have all that he wanted later.
So he paced up and down the deck of the liner, watching Jim at the sweep and Tom and me at the oars. The stream was very mild in this canyon and nothing like the foaming fury that we had been accustomed to.
Juarez watched everything with a keen and intelligent eye—saw how we steered and avoided the rocks. His searching instinct was at work.
"Do you think that you can steer the craft down this trail, Juarez?" inquired Jim.
"Yes, I can do so, certainly most. I soon get on to its curves."
This was to prove true, for his strength and skill were exactly what we needed in the boat.
"Here's the last bend," I cried.
We followed the graceful, sweeping water around it and made an easy landing on the west bank.
"Suppose we leave Tom to look after the boat," I said, "while we chase after the golden chest."
Even Juarez had to laugh at the comical look of dismay that came over Tom's face. He saw that I was joking, and a sheepish smile came over his face.
"What shall we take with us?" I asked.
"Something to eat," replied Jim.
"Of course," I said, "but how about the rifles?"
"Leave them," said Jim, "except one. We must travel light and be prepared for stiff climbing."
"Better take the heavy hammer and an adze," said Tom.
This showed that Tom had been doing some valuable thinking and he could, too, if he was really interested in anything.
"You're right, Tom," said Jim. "That's what we will need and we had better take a couple of big spikes."
"What for?" I asked.
"To drill with," Jim said, "if we find a place that looks likely we will have to investigate, that's the only way to find it. You don't suppose that it will be out in the open."
"Then if we are going into the mining business, better take some blasting powder."
"Good," replied Jim.
"Then a rope and pick may be of great benefit," said Juarez.
"Sure, Mike," replied Jim with a grin.
So each one of us contributed to the material we took along. We divided up the tools between ourselves and had them fastened on so that our climbing would not be impeded.
"Do you think it safe to leave the boat; we may be gone a day or two?" I asked.
"Certainly," replied Jim. "It won't need anything to eat in our absence, and it has plenty of water. Besides, I don't imagine that there are many people back of us coming down the river."
I could not help but smile myself at the idea of anyone making the terrible trip down the river.
"That's so," I replied. "You can't find three such fools as we are every year. There are other easier ways of committing suicide than gliding down the Colorado."
"But some Indians might find a trail over the wall and steal the boat," said Tom.
"How many trails do you suppose there are to the Colorado River within nine hundred miles?" asked Jim severely.
"I don't know," replied Tom.
"Just three," said Jim, "and this isn't one of them. At least not on the west bank."
So that was settled and we started out with a great deal of enthusiasm and energy. It was like being let out from the hard school of the river for a holiday.
We needed this breathing spell of pleasure too, for there was something depressing to the spirits in going through the deep and gloomy canyons, exposed to constant danger and shut off from the rays of the sun nearly all the time.
There was an exhilaration likewise in the search for this hidden treasure. Nor were we on a wild goose chase. We had a definite end in view and a definite guide, though there was enough vagueness to give us plenty of trouble.
We went whistling along, singing and joking each other, in high spirits. It was a beautiful, sunny day, with that wonderful quality in the air known only to the highest altitudes.
Our way lay first through glen, with flowering bushes, willow brush and the pleasant cottonwood trees that do so much to enliven the desert places of the West, so that one grows to look on them with a real affection that one would not give to the most beautiful tree of the overburdened tropics.
We came to a low, red wall that blocked our way. It was low, however, only by comparison, with the giant wall of other canyons.
Juarez regarded it carefully and then shook his head.
"Ah, no!" he determined. "This is not it. We must climb up."
This we did, and after a rather easy climb, going up a narrow transverse ravine, then after a steep pull we came out upon the top of the first wall.
We saw the greater outer wall of homogeneous sandstone rising about a half mile distant. Between us and it was a comparatively level stretch of rock, with a layer of thin soil upon it, from from which grew dwarf bushes, and everywhere were scattered boulders, some of them huge, others smaller.
"There is the place," said Juarez, nodding at the walls in front of us. They rose up to a height of over a thousand feet. "There we find it."
We walked with our long gliding stride, something as the Indians do, scarcely raising the foot. (I may as well have a word with you right here about walking, if you don't mind; it will be of use to you in long tramps. There is considerable nonsense in certain popular ideas about walking. Don't strut along with the shoulders thrown back. You will never see an Indian plainsman, nor any natural walker do that. Let the shoulders droop naturally, but keep the chest out. As you start, break the motion at the hips and use the feet as though they were paddles. Leave the backbone out of your walk. Anything that saves a jar to that makes for tireless endurance.
In using this simple method the weight falls on the front part of the foot. Move easily, even loosely, at the joints of ankle and knee. That breaks up stiffness, relieves strain and makes for endurance. Paddle out with the feet, and as you start, break the motion at the hip by a slight bend. By this method you acquire springiness. It is something the same effect you get as you stand on the end of a springing board ready to make a dive into water. If you are persistent in using this method, you will find it worth while.)
"What is that curious formation under the cliff?" asked Tom as we approached the outer wall.
"That," said Juarez, "is what remains of the houses and caches of the cliff dwellers."
It was in a great sheltering cave or open cavern in the beautifully smooth sandstone cliff, several hundred feet from the base of it.
There stood, almost as a natural granite from the rock, the square, symmetrical ruins of a tiny cliff dwellers' village. There was something extraordinarily quaint and curious about it as it nestled close under the protecting breast of the great rock.
At the base of the cliff were the ruins of a lower village. We found several complete specimens of pottery and many broken shards.
We could see that the construction of the thick walls of the close set houses was of flat stones held together by dried clay or with nothing but the rocks themselves pieced together. The windows and doors had sides and slabs of smooth, red stone.
"Will we find the treasure up there?" asked Tom. Juarez shook his head.
"No, but those people could have told."
We did not stop to cut steps up the precipitous sandstone to the village in the cliff, because we had no time to stop for antiquities.
"Let's divide here in two parties," said Juarez.
"All right," said Jim. "I imagine that this slit may be a very narrow lateral canyon."
"Maybe," Juarez replied. "I take Tom, you and Jo go together. The one finding it first will fire as a signal to the other party."
This was agreed on and we separated. Jim and I took the wall to the north and Tom and Juarez went south. Jim had his rifle and Juarez a pistol.
We made our way carefully, but saw nothing but the blank wall of red sandstone.
"What was that?" I asked twenty minutes after we had left Tom and Juarez. We stopped and listened intently. There was the faint sound of a distant report.
"They have found it," exclaimed Jim.
We took the back trail and we made good time too. In a short while we saw the two of them way down the wall of the canyon. They waved their hands to us.
"We have got it," yelled Tom when we came within hearing.
"What, the treasure?" cried Jim.
"No, the side canyon," replied Tom.
"My! how narrow," exclaimed Jim, as he got a first view of it.
"It looks just as if someone had taken an axe and split the wall right down," I remarked.
That expresses it. It was only a few feet across, extending the whole height of the cliff. In most places the light was shut out as in a cave, in other places there was just a narrow piece of blue ribbon for the sky and a little white sunshine spilt along one upper edge.
We went single file—in many places there was no other choice.
"This is what they call Fat Man's Nursery," said Jim. "Fortunately we are a lean and hungry lot."
"How are we ever going to get out of this lateral?" asked Tom. "The gold chest will be high up."
"I tell you, Tom," said Jim. "Just put a foot on one side and the other on the other side and straddle up."
This really looked possible in some places. The floor of "Lean Canyon" was mostly of solid rock, worn into hollows and curves by running water. Occasionally we came to places where our way was blocked by some huge boulder that had fallen from the cliff above.
Or there would be one wedged in half way down from the top. It was a curious sort of a place.
"If you see an old woman's face in the rock," said Juarez, "tell me; that is one sign on this trail."
We then realized that Juarez had not told us all his secret paper contained. It was the natural secretiveness of the Indian that he had not been able to throw off.
We traveled thus for half an hour, the canyon broadening, and then we came to a steady and rugged ascent.
"There is the face," exclaimed Tom suddenly.
There was no denying it. It was formed in the end of the western wall of the canyon, a perfect outline of an old woman's face with a pronounced chin and munched-in mouth.
"Yes, oh, yes," said Juarez, a dark flush showing on his cheeks. "She is looking at the place of the sign."
With great difficulty we made our way up to the top of the western end of "Lean Canyon," where we could ask the question of the sphinx who watched the sign of the treasure. In one place that was narrow we had to leap across to the other wall.
There was a fall of three hundred feet below us. If we had allowed ourselves to become nervous we might have missed the narrow ledge which gave us footing, but we were too eager in our quest to take account of danger.
Our moccasined feet helped to give us a secure foothold and we made the jump of six feet with safety. Juarez was the first to leap and he did it with a measured nonchalance, while Jim, with his long legs, seemed to step lightly across.
As Jim and Juarez stood on either side to catch me, I jumped with confidence. Tom, however, got a bad takeoff and would have fallen back into the canyon head first if Jim and Juarez had not gripped him.
It tested their steel sinews to maintain their balance and to keep from being carried down into the canyon below. We made our way without further incident to the top of the canyon and could see the outline of the old woman's face three hundred feet above us.
She seemed to be looking at a great cliff about a half mile distant. We scanned every inch of the cliff for something that looked like the mystic sign, but even my imagination could not conjure up anything that resembled it.
Jim meanwhile had moved off some distance and was studying the old woman in the rock with the keenest interest and intelligence.
"Say, boys," he exclaimed suddenly, "she is not looking out or up. The old lady is looking down."
"It's so," someone exclaimed. "Now we may locate it."
Jim moved from one point to another of observation. Finally he came to a pile of stones, something like a surveyor's monument, only it was about ten feet high. This he climbed.
No sooner had he taken his position on top of the cairn, for such it seemed to be, than he gave a yell of exultation.
"I see it, boys. There's the sign as big as life."
We were upon top of the cairn in a moment, that is to say, Tom and I were, but Juarez would not come up.
"No, no," he said, shaking his head. "I take your word, Jim, but I will not step up there."
"All right, my boy. I won't urge you," said Jim good naturedly. He seemed to understand Juarez.
We followed the pointing of Jim's hand and saw the ancient symbol [Symbol -O] about seventy feet below the old woman, upon the surface of a rock that curved out.
"That must be twelve feet across," said Jim, "in both directions."
"How do you suppose it was done?" I asked.
"By water possibly, and it may have been carved too," Jim replied.
"And the white coloring?" I inquired.
"It comes from some wash above, or it may sweat out of the rock itself."
"Well," said Tom, "let's begin our search."
"I'm willing," responded Jim.
By cutting a few steps in the sandstone we were able to reach the sign. As Jim was busily engaged with the pick upon the rock, making the red chips fly, he turned to us who were waiting our turn below.
"What does this remind you of, boys?" he asked.
"Of the moonlight night in our first canyon in Colorado," I said, "when we had to dig steps for you to get down from the cliff and an Indian took a snap shot at us with an arrow."
"Right you are," responded Jim.
"I hope we will get something really valuable this time," remarked Tom coolly.
"Why, don't you value your dear brother?" grinned Jim. "He's your guide, philosopher and friend."
"Never mind about that," said Tom. "Let's get to work."
Jim took the hammer and sounded all over the surface of the rock, but found no hollow place.
"I'm going to put a blast right in the center of that letter," declared Jim.
Juarez shook his head dubiously. It was evident that he was in dread of something. But Jim went ahead and drilled a hole in the center of the sign, and put a fuse to it. We drew back a ways down the rock but not far.
We saw the smoke, a mere thread, and an occasional spark. Then an explosion that sent pieces of red rock flying up and around us. A big hole was torn in the center of the letter.
Jim was the first to reach the place.
"This is it," he cried.
He took the pick and began digging, and we saw that there was a round opening into a natural hollow in the rock. Jim was able to crawl partially in and he made a careful search, lighting several matches. Then he crawled out, shaking his head.
"Empty is the cradle," he said. "There's only a few flakes of gold and you can see the place where the box has stood."
I crawled in next. Sure enough, there was the tarnished place on the rock where it had stood for centuries perhaps. In feeling around my hand touched a small bit of folded bark. Without thinking much about it I picked it up and put it in my pocket.
Tom stayed in the treasure hollow so long that we had to yank him out by the feet.
"He is the chief mourner," commented Jim.
"Look out, boys," yelled Juarez, "big stone coming."
Like a great cannon ball it was bounding down the rock towards us. We jumped aside just in time and it smacked between us.
"A considerably narrow escape," mused Jim.
"The old witch up there is offended," said Juarez. "I saw a genie fly out when you sent off that blast."
"I think the explosion loosened the rock, Juarez," said Jim. There were the two views. We went back to the boat with more experience but no treasure.
That evening as we sat on the bank above we talked over our experience of the day. Then I bethought myself of the piece of folded bark and pulled it out of my pocket.
"Here's something that I picked up in the rock hollow," I remarked.
Jim seized it eagerly and Juarez watched its unfolding with the keenest interest. The word "bark" is only a rough term to describe it. The document was really made of some sort of pulp, whether of wood or cacti I could not say.
When it was spread out, the paper was 12x12 inches. There was a curious drawing in the center with words written in Spanish, and in one corner was the representation of a mountain.
"That's a diagram," commented Jim, "but I cannot make much out of it, can you, Juarez?"
"I see somethings," announced Juarez. "That mountain is in Mexico. But the lines I do not understand, but we shall see when we go down there."
"It is the key to the whereabouts of the treasure box," announced Tom, "that drawing is. Only we have got to get someone who reads Spanish to translate it. Let me keep it?"
"No," said Jim, decisively. "Jo found it and he can take care of it."
"Hold on," suggested Tom. "Let's make a copy of it for each one of us."
"That's the idea," I acceded. "Who is the best artist?"
"Let Juarez try his hand at it," said Jim, "he's the one."
So Juarez went steadily to work, and he justified Jim's choice, for it was splendidly copied. His trained eyes and hand were evident in the drawing.
The next morning we started on the last part of our journey.
"Heave ho, my hearties," cried Jim as we pulled up our stone anchors. "All ashore who are going ashore," and we swung out into the easy current.
"This is what I like," cried Jim. "Give me the boat every time."
"You teach me how to steer, Jim?" said Juarez.
"You bet I will," replied the commodore.
Juarez was an apt pupil and he soon learned to use his lithe strength to the best advantage. It was of the greatest assistance to us, for it gave either Jim or Juarez a chance to take the other oar on the side back of me.
This threw Tom out of a job, but he did not mind, as his bruised leg bothered him. Jim found him a position, however, for he stationed him back of us to keep a sharp lookout ahead for rocks and other dangers.
He was really a pilot and his keen eyes were of great help. By a wave of a hand he indicated the direction to Juarez in which to steer, and to Jim and me he would call port or starboard.
Tom liked this. He was quick of decision and was not afraid to take the responsibility. In an easy stretch he would lean against the cabin and shout out his orders in a clarion voice, but in rough water he stood braced on deck, looking keenly ahead.
"Starboard your helm," he would yell. Then we dashed safely by a great rock.
"Now let her r-r-run," he commanded (slurring his r's) as we came to a clear section of the river.
Tom assumed considerable style under the impulse of his new authority, and we had to take it out of him at regular intervals.
It really was a fine plan, for we could give our whole attention to the oars. Then, too, Jim and I were much stronger than Tom, and with Juarez or Jim at the steering oar, we managed "The Captain" as though she were a skiff. We had need of our skill, too, in the great canyons that were ahead of us.
For a week or more we had easy work, as the Temple canyon was wide and the rapids not so severe. But it was easy only by comparison with what we had been through. To a fresh voyager it would have seemed terrific.
The weather was mostly clear and sunshiny, but one afternoon we ran into a heavy storm almost like a water spout.
The roar of the thunder in the narrow gorge that we were going through was terrific and the lightning streaks lit the gloom of the canyon with weird intensity, flashing a strange glare on the red and turbulent river.
It was exceedingly dangerous and wonderfully exciting. I do not know how we would have managed if Tom had not been free to watch the river ahead.
It was so dark in the chasm that we could see only a short distance ahead. And the roar of the river and of the thunder was something terrible.
No landing could be made and we dashed blindly down. It was marvelously exciting, and we were keyed to the highest pitch of efficiency.
The white line of foam would be the first warning we would have of a rock ahead, then we would bend all our strength and sometimes our boat would tilt on the current that ran off from the rock. It was close.
If we had struck head on we would have been in a most critical situation. The lightning was of no real help, only serving to blind us. Tom closed his eyes for the second of the flash so that he would not be blinded.
Fortunately the storm was brief and we saw a beautiful sight when the clouds cleared. On both sides of the canyon, from the cliffs twelve hundred feet in height, sprang numerous little water falls.
Some amber, others tinged with red or glittering with the silver of the sun. The largest in volume were four or five feet across, but before they reached the river below, they feathered out in spray. These cascades were beautiful indeed.
Several days after the thunder storm we had an overwhelming experience. It came on us suddenly and without sufficient warning to enable us to reach the shore.
It was a clear day and there had been no storm in our vicinity. We were going swiftly down the current, in the midst of a canyon, with towering walls over three thousand feet in height.
Suddenly my ear caught the sound of a louder roar than the usual tone of the river. I glanced back and in my dismay I could give no word of warning.
But the other boys had heard the ominous, thunderous roar filling the narrow depth of the canyon. Jim sprang to the steering oar, and without a word Juarez leapt to Jim's vacant place.
A great flood wave was charging down the canyon, filling it from side to side, the center of it bulging and boiling forward in foam. It was a terrific sight.
"Roll the stern anchor forward," yelled Jim.
The wave was a quarter of a mile away, coming down upon us with devouring fury.
"Defy the dragon, will you?" it seemed to roar. "You are caught in its jaws now. No escape."
Jim looked at it with a sneer of set teeth.
"We'll show you," he yelled. "You can't beat us, curse you!"
"Draw in the oars," he commanded, "into the bows; use the poles."
It was almost upon us. The stern began to lift upwards.
"Stand by to repel boarders." These were the last words we could hear. Then we were swallowed up in a tumult of roaring, foaming water, whirled downward like a straw in the furious onset of the flood.
By throwing all the weight to the bow we had kept from being swamped. Our high, strong sides saved us for the moment. If anything could stand the fury of that charge "The Captain" could. Powerful, braced like an ironclad, unsinkable.
We rose out of the jaws into the back of the dragon, and were surrounded by a chaos of rushing drift and some big logs and timber.
This mass held the waves down, and our powerful little craft, wedged in for the moment, was carried along at bewildering speed. It was like going down a cataract.
Then came a veritable battle of the logs. They tried to ram our boat. We fought them off with poles as best we could. Occasionally we received a blow that jarred "The Captain" from stem to stern.
One log bent a board back by a heavy, glancing blow. In a minute I had it braced back to its old place. Without a second's cessation we fought desperately but not wildly.
It was like a prize fighter tearing into a powerful opponent with flying, flaying fists to forestall a knockout. The next moment a jam of logs threatened to overwhelm us. It seemed viciously determined to thrust us against the wall of the canyon.
Something had to be done immediately. Juarez was the man. Before we could say a word, yea or nay, he leapt from the boat and on to the back of the jam. Prying with his pole against the key log of the combination he broke it and the freed logs swept down the current.
Nothing but his marvelous quickness and Indian litheness saved him. Just as it broke he sprang, with the nimbleness of a panther from the log that swirled back under the impulse of his leap, to the boat.
"FINE boy, Juarez," rang out Jim's voice. "We'll beat this roaring devil yet."
No sooner had Jim spoken than our chance came. A change had taken place in the situation, as there was an opportunity to land on the west shore, as the canyon had ended and there was a break between it and the canyon following.
If we did not land now we would probably land at the bottom of the river, for we could not hope to run another canyon. Those below were terrific gorges, dangerous under ordinary conditions, but with the rush of the flood waters, absolutely impossible.
We were favored for the moment by a change in the condition of the river. The first rush of the drift had passed and there was a comparatively smooth stretch of water, but further up the river great red waves were coming with reinforcements of logs and timbers against our boat.
"To the oars," yelled Jim, "we must get out of this now or go under."
Juarez and I sprang forward with lightning quickness, placed the oars in position, and then we pulled, how we pulled! Biting the raging current of the river with rapid strokes.
Exerting his strength to the very utmost, Jim fought the boat towards the shore. He seemed animated with a fury equal to the floods.
"Pull, pull," yelled Tom in frenzy. "Here comes a log to kill us."
It was bearing down toward us with awful swiftness. Its great end, three or four feet across, was like a battering ram in the swift swing of the current, ready to demolish us.
It was the last blow of the river, escape it and we would be safe. No need to urge us. Our oars foamed into the current and "The Captain" responded. Down it came, flung forward on a wave above Jim's head. With a desperate surge of strength Juarez and I gave a last pull together and the great log swept by our stern by six inches.
We were saved. With a few more strokes under Jim's skillful steering, we grounded our boat on the shore. Utterly exhausted Tom and I fell forward on the ground when we landed, our faces buried in our arms. Tom was sobbing hysterically. Little wonder! Even to stand on the shore and watch the raging river would frighten most of you into a chill.
Jim now turned and shook his fist at the baffled river.
"We fooled you," he yelled. "You don't get us or 'The Captain,' either."
Juarez said nothing, but sat on a rock breathing heavily, his hands hanging down before him. Without his help, quickness and skill we would never have made it.
We made our camp where we had landed, resting and repairing our boat. The river went down as rapidly as it had come up, for the flood had been due to a cloud burst and not to melting snow or a continuous storm.
On the third morning we were all ready to start upon the final round with the Colorado River. Before us was the marble canyon and the great gorge of the Grand Canyon.
Tom and I had recovered our equilibrium by the time we were ready to reëmbark. We felt reasonably confident of being able to navigate the gorges which were ahead.
"I shall be glad when we get through with this hilarious and irregular life," said Tom. "I don't believe any of us would have started if we could have known what we would have to go through with."
"I would," claimed Jim. "We have to hustle sometimes. But if you had stayed in the peaceful East you would have probably have gone bathing in some mill pond and got a cramp and drowned."
"You can't stop long enough in these darned canyons to get drowned," growled Tom.
We all laughed heartily at Tom's complaints. He was never so funny as when he was irritable.
"Another thing," said Tom in conclusion, "I'm not going to give up that search for treasure till we find it."
About noon of the day we started we saw ahead of us the shining walls of the greatest chasm that we had yet faced.
"Is that the Grand Canyon itself?" I asked.
"No," said Jim, who had been studying the maps carefully during our last stop. "That must be the Marble Canyon. The Little Colorado will come in below there somewhere."
"Is it really marble?" inquired Tom.
"You can see for yourself soon," said Jim.
However, names are deceitful things. It was indeed a marvelous gorge into which we entered. Where the waves of the river had worked, there shone a beautiful greyish marble, cut in curious deep lines by the action of the water, but above the walls were stained a deep red.
There was a massive solidness about this marble canyon that made the sandstone gorges appear light and airy. The walls rose in places to over three thousand feet in height.
Sometimes the walls were in thousand-foot terraces, sometimes well nigh perpendicular, at least so it seemed. It was, with all its grandeur, only the entrance hall for the Grand Canyon itself. Its peculiarity was in the sharp thrust out cliffs that rose perpendicularly from the river.
The Little Colorado was well named, for the river itself was but a small stream, but the narrow gorge by which it entered was impressive. It is the mingling of the Little Colorado with Marble Canyon that constitutes the Grand Canyon of the Colorado.
But it in reality is not quite so magically logical as that, since from miles below the entrance of the Little Colorado, the canyon walls fall away from the river and the canyon is like a great valley with perpendicular walls removed for several miles on either side of the river, and rising to a height of five thousand feet. Before us lay the great gorge, where the river seemed to lose itself in granite gloom as it wound downwards.
"Let's make a camp in this valley," suggested Jim, "and do some climbing before we take our last sprint down the river."
"I guess it will be our last too," groaned Tom, gloomily.
"Oh shut up!" commanded Jim wearily, giving him a kick with his moccasined foot. "You ought to have lived in the times of Jeremiah."
"You ought to have lived in the Stone Age," retorted Tom, "it would have just suited you."
We made camp near a pleasant looking green stretch of shore and on the following day we started out on our little picnic excursion that consumed several days.
It would take another book to describe what we saw on that trip. After some remarkably hard work and interesting climbing we reached the rim of the canyon, some six thousand feet above the Colorado, that seemed but a narrow rivulet and its long familiar roar was reduced to a gentle purr of sound.
We saw below and around us one of the unequalled panoramas of the world. Back of us was the black plateau of the great forest land, called the "Kaibab," covered with pines, and beneath our feet was the Grand Canyon itself. Twelve miles from rim to rim and in the chasm were towers, pinnacles, terraced plateaus, palaces and temples, and in the distance, faint and fair formations of beauty and of light.
The coloring was the most wonderful of all. Deep down and far away was the purple gneiss of the gorge, ribboned with granite, then on either side of the river rose the various architectural forms and structures of the canyon.
Based on purple, then a wonderful brown; widest of all the rich red of the sandstone, while the highest pinnacles, peaks and plateaus had a coping of white limestone to correspond with the eight hundred feet of the same rock just below the rim.
But who shall tell of the glories of the sunset as the light fades from the white of the western wall and the vast, vast canyon is filled with the purple shadows!
"Wouldn't it jar you?" exclaimed Jim, the first to break the awestruck silence that bound us, when its immensity first came under our eyes.
"Yes," said Tom, "if you stepped off it would."
Without foreboding, but with grim determination, we left our pleasant camp on the bank of the river and swinging out into the current we headed for the gorge.
Then in a moment we were swallowed up between its jaws as a fly goes into the mouth of a lion. We were enured to dangers and terrible hazards, these we were prepared to meet, nor did we encounter anything equal to the flood of the week before. In that the Colorado had done its worst.
But it was the sombreness and the gloom of that granite gorge that overwhelmed us. It seemed as I have said, as though the river as it plunged and roared downward between the dark and narrow walls, was carrying us down into some nether and long-forgotten hell.
We could see little of the glorious upper canyon that was on either side of the gorge whose walls rose perpendicularly above us for fifteen hundred feet.
"One good thing about it," said Tom, "when we get through with this we are through for certain."
"It won't take us long if we keep up this gait," I said, as we swept downward like an express train, and the walls going by as fences do when you look out from a car window. We ran into one terrible rapid where the river was lashed into a mass of foam from wall to wall.
The waves poured over into our boat nearly swamping us. We pulled out of it alive and the worst was over.
At last, at last, our war worn, battered boat drifted out into the broad sunny reaches of the Colorado. Behind us was the gloom of the labyrinthine, rock bound prison with the gnashing river within it rushing ever downward, eager to escape.
We were glad, glad to have come through our terrific experiences alive and though we were weather beaten, well and uninjured.
"Thank Heaven!" exclaimed Jim, as he steered down the broad unhampered river.
So after some time of quiet journeying we came to the end of our trip. We found a pleasant camping place near a cove where we anchored our faithful boat. How splendidly it had carried us through.
Battered and beaten though it was, still perfectly seaworthy, or to be more exact, riverworthy. It had been our home so many weeks that it seemed to be a part of our lives, and we had a real affection for it, like one has for a faithful dog who has been one's companion through trials and dangers.
One evening we sat around the campfire, underneath the cottonwood trees with the slow moving Colorado in the foreground. We had been talking of home, both in Kansas and York State and also of our old friend the captain, when Jim spoke up:
"Gentlemen of the Order of the Colorado and fellow pioneers," he said, in his most oratorical manner, "I move that we free and untrammeled Americans proceed next to the invasion of Mexico."
This was carried with but one dissenting voice and that was Tom's, but that was to be expected.
At this point I may say that "The Frontier Boys in Mexico, or Mystery Mountain," will be a book of varied and exciting incidents which take place in a wonderfully interesting and remarkable country. And now for a brief time I bid you adios.
As the reader who has been with us all through this trip from the fight with the Apaches to the navigation of the Grand Canyon seems to be a good fellow he is invited to come along too. You may not learn as much of the grandeurs of nature, which have in considerable measure found place in this book, but with exciting adventure it will be replete.