The Silver Canyon: A Tale of the Western Plains

by George Manville Fenn

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

  DOWN IN THE SILVER CANYON.

  The Doctor had not lost any time. Tents had been set up, and men werebusy raising sheds of rough stone which were to be roofed over withpoles. But at the same time, he had had men toiling away in opening upa rift that promised to yield silver pretty bounteously, for the ancientmine seemed hardly a likely place now, being dangerous, and theprincipal parts that were easy of access apparently pretty well workedout.

  This was something of a disappointment, but a trifling one, for themountain teemed with silver, and then there was the canyon to explore.

  This the Doctor proposed to examine on the day following Bart's return,for the services of the chief would be required to find a way downunless the descent was to be made by ropes.

  The Beaver and his interpreter were brought to the Doctor's tent, andthe matter being explained, the Indian smiled, and expressed hiswillingness to show them at once; so a few preparations having beenmade, and some provisions packed in case that the journey should provelong, Bart, the Doctor, Joses, and the interpreter started, leaving theBeaver in front to lead the way.

  He started off in a line parallel to the canyon, as it seemed to Bart,and made for a patch of good-sized trees about half a mile from themountain, and upon reaching this they found that the great river chasmhad curved round, so that it was not above a hundred yards away, andBart began to think that perhaps it would not prove to be so precipitousthere.

  The Beaver, seeing his eagerness, smiled and nodded, and thrusting thebushes aside, he entered the patch of dense forest, which was apparentlyabout half a mile in length, running with a breadth of half thatdistance along the edge of the canyon.

  The interpreter followed, and after a few minutes they returned to saythat no progress could be made in that direction, so they re-entered theforest some fifty yards lower, and where it looked less promising thanbefore.

  The chief, however, seemed to be satisfied, and drawing his knife, hehacked and chopped at the projecting vines and thorns so as to clear away for those who followed; till after winding in and out for some time,he came at length to what seemed little more than a crack in the groundabout a yard wide, and pretty well choked up with various kinds ofgrowth.

  At the first glance it seemed impossible for any one to descend intothis rift, but the interpreter showed them that it was possible byleaping down, and directly after there was a loud, rattling noise, andan extremely large rattlesnake glided out of the rift on to the levelground. It was making its escape, when a sharp blow from the chief'sknife divided it nearly in two, and he finished his task by crushing itshead with the butt of his rifle.

  "We must be on the look-out, Bart," said the Doctor, "if these reptilesare in any quantity;" and as the Beaver leaped down he followed, thencame Bart, and Joses closed up the rear.

  "I shall get all the sarpents," he grumbled. "You people will disturbthem all, and they'll do their stinging upon me."

  Then the descent became so toilsome that conversation ceased, andnothing was heard but the crackling of twigs, the breaking off ofbranches, and the sharp, rustling noise that followed as the travellersforced their way through the bushes.

  This lasted for about fifty yards, and then the descent became veryrapid, and the trees larger and less crowded together. The riftwidened, too, at times, but only to contract again; and then its sidesso nearly approached that their path became terribly obscure, andwithout so energetic a guide as they possessed it would have required astout-hearted man to proceed.

  Every here and there they had to slide down the rock perhaps forty orfifty feet; then there would be a careful picking of the way over somerugged stones, and then another slide down for a while.

  Once or twice it seemed as if they had come to a full stop, the riftbeing closed up by fallen masses of earth and stones; but the Beavermounted these boldly, as if he knew of their existence, and loweredhimself gently down the other side, waiting to help the Doctor, for Bartlaughingly declined, preferring as he did to leap from stone to stone,and swing himself over cracks that seemed almost impassable.

  "This is nature's work, Bart," the Doctor said, as he paused to wipe hisstreaming face. "No former inhabitants ever made this. It is anearthquake-split, I should say."

  "But it might be easily made into a good path, sir," replied Bart.

  "It might be made, Bart, but not easily, and it would require a greatdeal of engineering to do it. How dark it grows! You see nothinghardly can grow down here except these mosses and little fungi."

  "Is it much farther, sir?" cried Bart.

  "What! are you tired, my lad?"

  "No, sir; not I. Only it seems as if we must be near the bottom of thecanyon."

  "No, not yet," said the Beaver in good English, and both the Doctor andBart smiled, while the chief seemed pleased at his advance in theEnglish tongue being noticed. "Long down--long down," he said incontinuation.

  "The Beaver-with-Sharp-Teeth tells the English chief and the little boyEnglish chief that it is far yet to the bottom of the way to the rushingriver of the mountain," said the interpreter, and the chief frowned athim angrily, while Bart felt as if he should like to kick him forcalling him a "little boy English chief;" but the stoical Indian calmlyand indifferently allowed the angry looks he received to pass, andfollowed the party down as they laboriously stepped from stone to stone.

  "There's a pretty good flush o' water here in rainy times, master,"shouted Joses. "See how all the earth has been washed out. Shouldn'twonder if you found gold here."

  "I ought to have thought of that, Joses," replied the Doctor, as heproceeded to examine the crevices of the rock over which he was walkingas well as he could for the gloom and obscurity of the place, and at theend of five minutes he uttered a cry of joy. "Here it is!" heexclaimed, holding up two or three rounded nodules of metal. "No; I amwrong," he said. "This light deceives me; it is silver."

  To his surprise, the Beaver took them from his hand with a gesture ofcontempt, and threw the pieces away, though they would have purchasedhim a new blanket or an ample supply of ammunition at Lerisco or anyother southern town.

  "Wait," he said, airing his English once more. "Plenty! plenty!" and hepointed down towards the lower part of the narrow crevice or crack inthe rock along which they were passing.

  "Go on, then," said the Doctor; and once more they continued theirdescent, which grew more difficult moment by moment, and more dark, andwild, and strange.

  For now the rock towered up on either side to a tremendous height, andthe daylight only appeared as a narrow streak of sky, dappled with darkspots where the trees hung over the rift. Then the sky was shut outaltogether, and they went on with their descent in the midst of acurious gloom that reminded Bart of the hour just when the first streaksof dawn are beginning to appear in the morning sky.

  This went on for what seemed to be some time, the descent growingsteeper and more difficult; but at last there came a pleasant rushingsound, which Bart knew must be that of the river. Then there was theloud song of a bird, which floated up from far below, and then all atonce a pale light appeared on the side of the rocks, which were now sonear together that the sides in places nearly touched above their heads.

  Five minutes' more arduous descent, and there was glistening wet moss onthe rock, and the light was stronger, while the next minute the pure,clear light of day flashed up from an opening that seemed almost attheir feet--an opening that was almost carpeted with verdant green, uponwhich, after dropping from a rock some ten feet high, they stood,pausing beneath an arch of interweaving boughs that almost hid theentrance to the rift, and there they stood, almost enraptured by thebeauty of the scene.

  For the bottom of the canyon had been reached, and its mightyverdure-decked, rocky walls rose up sheer above their heads, appearingto narrow towards the top, though this was an optical delusion. All wasbright and glorious in the sunshine. The trees and shrubs were of avivid green, the grass was brilliant with flowers; and r
unning inserpentine waves through the middle of the lovely prairie that softlysloped down to it on either side, and whose sedges and clumps of treesdipped their tips in its sparkling waters, ran the river, dancing andfoaming here over its rocky bed, there swirling round and forming deeppools, while in its clear waters as they approached Bart could see theglancing scales of innumerable fish on its sun-illumined shallows.

  Hot and weary with their descent, the first act of all present was todip their cups into the pure clear water, and then, as soon as theirfeverish thirst was allayed, the Doctor proceeded to test the sand ofthe river to see if it contained gold, while Bart, after wondering why aman who had discovered a silver mine of immense wealth could not besatisfied, went wandering off along the edge of the river, longing forsome means of capturing the fish, whose silver scales flashed in thesunshine whenever they glided sidewise over some shallow ridge of yellowsand that would not allow of their swimming in the ordinary way.

  Sometimes he was able to leap from rock to rock that stood out of theriver bed, and formed a series of barriers, around which the swiftstream fretted and boiled, rushing between them in a series of cascades;and wherever one of these masses of water-worn stone lay in the midst ofthe rapid stream, Bart found that there was always a deep stilltransparent pool behind; and he had only to approach softly, and benddown or lie upon his chest, with his head beyond the edge, to see thatthis pool was the home of some splendid fish, a very tyrant ready topounce upon everything that was swept into the still water.

  "I wish we were not bothering about gold and silver," thought Bart, asafter feasting his eyes upon the fish he turned to gaze upon thebeauties of the drooping trees, and spire-shaped pines that grew asregular in shape as if they had been cast in the same mould; while,above all, the gloriously coloured walls of the canyon excited hiswonder, and made him long to scale them, climbing into the manyapparently inaccessible places, and hunting for fruit, and flower, andbird.

  Bart had rambled down the river, so rapt in the beauties around him thathe forgot all about the Doctor and his search for the precious metals.All at once, as he was seated out upon a mass of stone by the riverside, it struck him that, though he had watched the fish a good deal, itwould be very pleasant to wade across a shallow to where a reef of rocksstood out of the water, so placed that as soon as he reached them hecould leap from one to the other, and settle himself down almost in thevery middle of the river; and when there he determined to wait hischance and see if he could not shoot two or three of the largest troutfor their meal that night.

  The plan was no sooner thought of than Bart proceeded to put it inexecution.

  He waded the shallow pretty easily, though he could not help wonderingat the manner in which his feet sank down into the soft sand, whichseemed to let them in right up to the knees at once, and then to closeso tightly round them that, to use his own words, he seemed to have beenthrusting his legs into leaden boots. However, he dragged them out,reached the first rock of the barrier or reef, and stood for a fewminutes enjoying the beauty of the scene, while the stream rushed by oneither side with tremendous force.

  The next stone was a good five feet away, with a deep glassy floodrushing around. Bart leaped over it, landed safely, and found the nextrock quite six feet distant, and a good deal higher than the one he wasupon.

  He paused for a moment or two to think what would be the consequences ifhe did not reach this stone, and judged that it meant a good ducking anda bit of a swim to one of the shallows below.

  "But I should get my rifle and cartridges wet," he said aloud, "and thatwould never do. Shall I? Shan't I?"

  Bart's answer was to gather himself up and leap, with the result that hejust reached the edge of the rock, and throwing himself forward managedto hold on, and then scramble up in safety.

  Going back's easy enough, thought Bart, as he prepared to bound to thenext rock, a long mass, like the back of some monstrous alligator justrising above the flood. Along this he walked seven or eight yards,jumped from block to block of a dozen more rugged pieces, and thenbounded upon a roughly semi-circular piece that ended the ridge like abastion, beyond which the water ran deep and swift, with many an eddyand mighty curl.

  "This is grand!" cried Bart, whose eyes flashed with pleasure; andsettling himself down in a comfortable position, he laid his rifleacross his knees with the intention of watching the fish in a shallowjust above him, but only to forget all about them directly after, as hesat enjoying the beauties of the scene, and wished that his sisterlycompanion Maude were there to see how wonderfully grand their motherNature could be.

  "If there were no Indians," thought Bart, "and a good large town closeby, what a lovely place this would be for a house. I could find asplendid spot; and then one could hunt on the plains, and shoot andfish, and the Doctor could find silver and gold, and--good gracious!What's that?"