Читать книгу Softfoot of Silver Creek - Robert Leighton - Страница 11

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“TURN back, Softfoot! Turn back, turn back!”

The echo was repeated in weird reverberation from the sheer rock walls of the cañon; at first loud and clear, and then dying down to a whisper.

It came to Softfoot’s ears like the voice of some mysterious spirit of the sinister desolation, warning him of his great danger. He heard it above the deep-throated roar of the angry current that was sweeping him and his three companions helplessly onward to calamity.

There was no chance to turn back, no chance for even a moment’s pause in which to rest his aching wrists and the tensely strained muscles of his arms and body. He could only trust to the protection of his “medicine” and hold grimly to his steering paddle, forcing the frail canoe to right or to left as it went on its mad career into the dark gorge.

“I want to do this thing, because I am afraid to do it,” he told himself. “My medicine will help me. We shall come to no harm.”

The stream was narrowing. The air grew dark and chill. On each side of him, so close that it seemed that he could almost touch them with his paddle, were black, moist walls towering up to dizzy heights.

The rushing water seemed to leap and bound like a living monster, its middle arching two or three feet higher than its sides. It surged on in great billows, green, hillocky, and terribly swift, dividing into two separate streams where, close in advance of the canoe, it was flung to either side by the intervening obstacle of Red Squaw Rock. And the canoe raced forward buoyantly, held aloft on the water’s convex surface while the black, mossy walls swept past half hidden in a mist of flying spray.

Little Antelope lay trembling in the bilge, closing his eyes and waiting for the final crash that meant inevitable destruction.

“I am afraid!” he wailed piteously. “Afraid!” And the cañon repeated the word: “Afraid, afraid!” while the surging waters laughed mockingly.

Crouched on his bare knees behind Softfoot, Mosquito Child caught at the stout shaft of the steering paddle, adding the strength of his two hands to keep the canoe under control. They were now plunging headlong onward as if drawn by some magnetic force into the gnarled face of the Red Squaw.

If the side of the bark canoe should but graze against that rock, the whole frail fabric would be torn to splinters, and no swimmer could live in the turbulent swirl of angry waves that circled round.

The muscles of Softfoot’s back and arms stood out in heaving convolutions as he held the paddle blade desperately against the fierce pressure of the stream. Prairie Owl gripped the gunwale and swayed his weight from side to side to preserve the balance so that they might not be swamped.

At the critical moment the paddle was lifted. The prow swerved obediently. Then the canoe was caught with a violent jerk that swept it into the right-hand current, and it was carried like a floating arrow through the narrow channel of curving green water, past the pinnacle, but again to plunge into a swirling eddy of leaping foam, where the divided streams were rejoined beyond the rock.

“My medicine is good,” murmured Softfoot. It was his Indian way of expressing his fervent thanks to Providence that the peril was safely past.

Mosquito Child relinquished his hold of the paddle and devoted himself to keeping the canoe steady, while Softfoot continued to ward it off from the cliffs by keeping in midstream.

Once more they were whirled off in the main current with its fearsome dips and rises and its downward-sloping rapids. The steep enclosing walls of the cañon, dripping with moisture, scarred into dimly fantastic shapes, still shut out the sky and filled the deep gorge with the gloom of eternal twilight.

For two or more miles this gloom continued. Then gradually the rocky walls grew wider apart and enough light penetrated the depths to show the green fronds of ferns and the red fringes of moss.

The waters ceased to roar and to lash the canoe with spray; and the leaping torrent subsided into a ripple of frothy waves. Suddenly the light grew strong again.

“We are through!” cried Prairie Owl. “Sit up, Little Antelope, and look!”

Little Antelope scrambled to his knees and saw that the canoe was no longer in Red Squaw Cañon, but sweeping smoothly through an open green valley brilliant with sunlit prairie flowers.

All four of the Pawnee boys now seized their paddles.

“Stop!” commanded Softfoot when they had drifted some distance. “We cannot go back to our teepee in the woods by way of the cañon. Our canoe is of no use. We must get out of it. We must walk. It is a long trail. We will make camp and rest for awhile. There is a small creek in the pine wood beyond the next hill where there is good ground and good hunting. Men call it Ghost Pine Creek.”

He paused, crouching, with his dripping paddle across his naked brown thighs. He was sniffing the warm air like a wild creature of the prairie scenting a possible enemy from afar; his sensitive nostrils were twitching. He held up a finger, enjoining silence. Then again he sniffed.

“Softfoot smells the good scent of the roses among the sage grass,” said Prairie Owl. “He hears the whisper of the wind in the pine trees.”

Softfoot dipped his paddle, but his gaze was fixed upon the fringe of fir trees on the ridge of the nearest hill.

“No Indians but our own Pawnees would make camp on the Mishe-mokwa Reserve,” he said to his companions. “Yet there is a camp-fire burning in Ghost Pine Valley. I smell the wood smoke. I hear the tread of feet, the voices of men. They are perhaps our enemies. Put away your paddle, Mosquito Child. Be ready with your bow and arrows. And you, too, Little Antelope. Go softly. We will land on the farther bank, where these strangers cannot reach us. We shall see them as we pass the mouth of the creek.”

Prairie Owl and he plied their paddles swiftly but cautiously, making no sound, while the other two crouched with only their heads and shoulders above the level of the gunwale, each with an arrow fixed on his bowstring.

The canoe glided smoothly in the current, moving like a shadow under the farther cliff. It passed beyond the wooded hill, which now sloped down into a grassy vale, broken by rough boulders and rocky bluffs, and intersected by the bed of a narrow watercourse.

On the higher ground two or three hobbled horses and some mules could be seen grazing. Softfoot quickly made out the shapes of white canvas tents under the sheltering trees, where camp-fires were sending up a thin blue mist of smoke. Near them was a covered prairie wagon such as he had never before seen. Its wheels were strange to him. Among the boulders in the watercourse he saw the figures of men wearing wide hats, red shirts, and heavy boots that reached high above their knees. He thought of his friend, Blue Eye.

“They are paleface men,” declared Little Antelope. “Why are they here? What are they doing?”