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Updated: June 5, 2025
It was that fifty yards that saved me, for by the time I had picked myself up and started on a run the bear was coming hellitywhoop. I ran like a scared wolf and I think my momentum would have carried me across the barranca if the bank had been firm, but the earth caved under me as I took off for the leap, and down I went into the gully under a mass of loose earth.
I fancied her carried into a rude captivity; becoming the squaw of some brutal brave; and with the agony of the thought I rose to my feet and rushed out upon the prairie. Half-frantic, I wandered, not heeding whither I went. I must have walked for hours, but I took no note of the time. I strayed back upon the edge of the barranca.
The presence of the new river in the bed of the long empty barranca astonished these cowmen exceedingly. And when they heard all that the boys had to tell they were almost of the opinion that they must have been dreaming.
Here in a small rancho in a lonely spot called Barranca del Peregrine, and with only a few sheep and cows to subsist on, he spent the remainder of his life. His wife, though old, bore him one child, a daughter, named Transita. They taught her nothing; for in all respects they lived like peasants and had forgotten the use of books.
He had balls buzzing all about him, he said, till he got out of sight around a turn in the barranca; and he said before he made that turn he looked back once and saw a big feller up on top of the bank letting off at him as hard as he could go.
Our time spent at the battery had been so short that, with the difficulty which the enemy experienced in descending the cliff, the head of their line had only now reached the bottom of the barranca. They were running in twos and threes towards the stream, which, near this point, impinged upon the foot of the precipice.
Their slacking that way give him a chance, he said, and he took it cutting the mule loose from the harness with one hand, while he kept on blazing away over her back with the other; then letting 'em have it from both hands for a minute, from what guns he had left that wasn't empty, to sort of paralyze 'em; and then getting quick on the mule's back and starting her down the barranca on a dead run.
Frank, as one born to the country, and familiar with many of its peculiarities, amused himself by pointing out to his comrade the various positive signs that as a rule marked these strange water-courses. "You see, Bob," he remarked, "this is really what might be called a barranca." "Yes, I've heard you tell about them before," observed the other.
Dust eddies whirled across the barranca. The prickly pear and the palo verde flashed past, green splashes against a background of drab. The pudgy creosote, the buffalo grass, the undulation of sand hills were an old story, but to-day his eyes devoured them hungrily.
Still, all would have been stiff and formal had the sides of the barranca been lined only with perpendicular columns; but broken and displaced pillars are piled in every conceivable position against the front, while a vine with brilliant leaves had run to every fissure and spread itself out to enjoy the sunshine.
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