United States or Samoa ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I'll drift down by day, tie up by night, and watch for you at the mouth of every canyon till I come to Nonnezoshe Boco." Shefford could not believe the evidence of his ears. He knew the treacherous San Juan River. He had heard of the great, sweeping, terrible red Colorado and its roaring rapids. "Oh, it seems impossible!" he gasped. "You'll just lose your life for nothing."
"No fear," said the old man obstinately, "the boco's one eye's worth any horse's two. Me an' the boco will be near the lead when the whips are crackin', take it from me." "Come along, then!" Hugh clambered on to his raw-boned steed, known as "Close Up," because he would go so close to the buffaloes, and the procession started. The five white men rode ahead, all smoking with great enjoyment.
Difficult steps were met, too, yet nothing compared to those of the upper canyon. Shefford calculated that this day's travel had advanced several hours; and more than ever now he was anticipating the mouth of Nonnezoshe Boco. Still another hour went by. And then came striking changes.
Here the Indian waited for them. He pointed down another long swell of naked stone to a narrow green split which was evidently different from all these curved pits and holes and abysses, for this one had straight walls and wound away out of sight. It was the head of a canyon. "Nonnezoshe Boco!" said the Indian. "Nas Ta Bega, go on!" replied Shefford.
But he'll see you safe out of the Painted Desert. ... The thing that worries me most is how not to miss you all at the mouth of Nonnezoshe. You must have sharp eyes. But I forget the Indian. A bird couldn't pass him.... And suppose Nonnezoshe Boco has a steep-walled, narrow mouth opening into a rapids!... Whew! Well, the Indian will figure that, too.
"The Indian will turn the trick, I tell you. Take my hunch. It's nothing for me to drift down a swift river. I worked a ferry-boat once." Shefford, to whom flying straws would have seemed stable, caught the inflection of defiance and daring and hope of the Mormon's spirit. "What then after you meet us at the mouth of Nonnezoshe Boco?" he queried. "We'll all drift down to Lee's Ferry.
"The Indian plans this way. God, it's great!... If only I can do my end!... He plans to take mustangs to-day and wait with them for you to-night or to-morrow till you come with the girl. You'll go get Lassiter and the woman out of Surprise Valley. Then you'll strike east for Nonnezoshe Boco. If possible, you must take a pack of grub.
The Mormon flung high his arms and let out the stentorian yell that had rolled down to the fugitives as they waited at the mouth of Nonnezoshe Boco. But now it had a wilder, more exultant note. Strange how he shifted his gaze to Fay Larkin! "Girl! Get up and look!" he called. "The Ferry! The Ferry!"
The fugitives traveled miles farther down Nonnezoshe Boco, and the only changes were that the walls of the lower gorge heightened and merged into those above and that these upper ones towered ever loftier. Shefford had to throw his head straight back to look up at the rims, and the narrow strip of sky was now indeed a flowing stream of blue.
It reached a point opposite to where Shefford and the Indian waited, and, though Joe made prodigious efforts, it slid on. Still, it also drifted shoreward, and half-way down to the mouth of Nonnezoshe Boco Joe threw the end of a rope to the Indian. "Ho! Ho!" yelled the Mormon, again setting into motion the fiendish echoes.
Word Of The Day