Buffalo Bill's death message or, In the face of doom
Klamath John seemed to lose his head as that black hole of a tunnel was
brought close at hand. He stood up again, balancing himself, as if he
thought of jumping over into the water. He threw down his hat, snatched
from his head a wig of long hair, howled as if he had suddenly become an
insane devil, and refused to obey the orders of the scout.
Buffalo Bill lifted his paddle, while his other hand stole back as if to
get out his revolver for the purpose of shooting Klamath John. But a
violent lurching of the canoe caused him to grip the paddle again and
thrust it into the boiling stream.
“Sit down!” he yelled, in desperation. “You lunatic, sit down!”
The dark hole of the tunnel was right before them now. Into that hole
the river rushed with a roar that was frightful.
Mickey Flynn and Buffalo Bill were bending to their paddles, straining
until the stout ash blades bent as if they would break, straining to
hold the canoe steady and to keep it in the center of the current. They
had no time to give to Klamath John. Cudjo was but a bit of helpless
lumber. Overcome by terror, he had sunk down in the bottom of the canoe,
where, crouching on his knees, he prayed frantically.
Klamath John yelled again as the canoe shot for the black hole, which it
did as if it were a race horse rushing to leap an obstruction.
As Klamath John yelled in that wild way, he sprang straight out into the
air. He clutched something that swung dangling in the mist over the
mouth of the tunnel.
Buffalo Bill saw that it was a rope, and that Klamath John had seized it
and was drawing himself up hand over hand. He heard Klamath John yell
again, in a different key—a yell that seemed to speak of triumph—and
then the canoe went into the dark hole, rushing to apparent destruction.
“Hold hard!” Buffalo Bill yelled to Mickey Flynn.
“Har-rd it is!” Flynn screeched back. “Kape her in the middle! Kape her
in the middle! Pl’ase goodness, if we’re goin’ into the cinter of the
airth we’re goin’ in a hurry.”
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CHAPTER V.
THROUGH THE TUNNEL.
The roar of the stream was much increased as the canoe shot into the
natural rock tunnel. The walls caught and threw it back with tenfold
power. The darkness was terrifying.
As the canoe sped on its arrowy way into the darkness, Buffalo Bill
crouched in the bow, trying to penetrate the gloom. Now and then the
white spray that boiled about some half-sunken rock could be seen, and
the canoe steered past it.
Occasionally he shouted a command to Flynn, but he doubted if in that
mad turmoil of sound the plucky young Irishman heard him.
The minutes seemed like hours, and how long that terrifying voyage
lasted the scout did not know.
With a jerk and a thump the canoe scraped over some sunken object. A
small hole had been torn in its bottom, near the prow, and the water
began to come in over the scout’s feet. Apparently the end of the wild
journey was at an end, for it was clear the canoe could not now live
many minutes.
The scout tried to block the rent partially by thrusting his foot
against it, but still the water came in, and the exertions he put forth
with the paddle made it hard for him to keep his foot over that hole. He
did not try to communicate this ugly fact to the praying darky, nor to
the heroic Irishman. They would know it soon enough. Premature knowledge
would do them no good. He only did his best to keep the water from
rushing in.
The scout felt the canoe sinking slowly under him, when ahead he dimly
discerned some dark outline, which a minute later proved to be an
island, low and rocky, but with sand round its margin, as he later
discovered.
With a desperate sweep of the paddle he swung the prow of the canoe
toward this island.
The light craft struck it with such force that the forward end was
lifted, bouncing up apparently, and then slipped over the wave-worn
rocks, driven on by the waves and by the momentum of the canoe.
The scout sprang out at once, and, seizing the painter, he began to haul
on it, to bring the canoe still farther out of the water.
Cudjo aroused when he saw that the canoe had struck and was actually
aground on what seemed to be land. He could see but the dim outline, but
that was enough, and with a howl he sprang out of the water, landing
waist-deep. He would have been swept away, if Michael Flynn, coming
after him, had not caught him and helped him to make a landing.
Buffalo Bill aided both as they scrambled out of the water.
Cudjo dropped down on the wet rocks, lifting his voice again in prayer.
“Help here with the boat, Flynn,” said the scout.
Together they dragged it clear of the water, placing it well up beyond
the waves.
The island was but a few yards wide and not over twenty yards long; but
in the center it rose to a secure height above the stream, and there the
rocks were comparatively dry, for the waves and the wash of the current
did not reach them.
Buffalo Bill did not begin to explore the island until he had made the
painter of the canoe fast to a jutting point of rock.
“Come, Cudjo!” he said, shouting the words. “Be a man! We’re safe for
the present.”
The darky stopped praying and got on his feet.
“Marse Cody, we is dead men!” he urged. “We ain’t drowned, but here we
is, and we can’t git away. I reckon dis is de center of de earf. How we
gwine to git out of it?”
The scout walked toward the other end of the small island, which lay in
the very middle of the stream. The darkness was too great to see what
was in the river beyond this island; but that they had found a refuge at
a time when matters could not have been worse gave him a renewal of
hope.
“Pl’ase Heaven, we’re shtill livin’!” said Flynn, standing beside the
scout and looking out in the darkness where the river lost itself.
“And as long as there’s life there is hope,” was the scout’s answer.
“Thrue f’r ye! That canoe may yit take us out av this.”
“It has had a hole knocked in it, at the prow, but I think we can patch
it.”
“A hole in it! Whoosh! Thin it’s dead lucky we are that this island was
close by. I seen ye throw the head av the canoe into it, and then I
pulled f’r it, and we made it. But how we’re to git aff av it, and what
we’ll find whin we do, I dunnaw.”
Cudjo came slowly across the rocky island, shivering.
“Marse Cody,” he cried, “what y’o fink of dat man?”
“Klamath John?”
“Yas, sir. What yo’ fink of him, now? I done warn yo’ not to trust ’im.
But you did, and here we is. Did yo’ see dem whiskers and dat hair dat
man was wearin’? Befo’ Gawd, dat beat me!”
“An’ it’s mesilf will bate him, if iver I see his ugly mug ag’in. False
whiskers and false hair, d’ye mind! It was the iligant make-up that he
had, to be sure. I’m hopin’ that he’s livin’, so that I can hammer his
face in f’r that.”
When they examined the canoe they decided that they could patch it. Then
they sat down to talk over their situation.
“Klamath John fooled me,” Buffalo Bill admitted. “But I still think the
letter he showed me was genuine. I’ve got that letter with me now, and
we’ll see if we can take a look at it. I was sure it said take the right
fork of the river.”
He drew out his waterproof metallic match box, and then from the stores
that were in the canoe he got a candle. Having struck his match and
lighted his candle, he first looked over the island by its light, and
then examined the letter written by Red Reynard, the Fox.
“‘Take the right fork, where it branches, and you’re safe enough,’”
Buffalo Bill read from this letter.
All three looked at those words.
“But here is a thing that we didn’t properly consider. Red Reynard may
have thought of the other branch as the right fork. Perhaps he meant the
one on the right hand looking upstream, instead of the one on the right
hand looking downstream. And that would make all the difference in the
world.”
“It was quare, the way that rapscallion did, anyhow,” said Flynn. “He
thought we had taken the wrong coorse, and thin he wint that wild he was
clane an idjiot. ’Twas that made him pull aff his whiskers an’ wig.”
“The whiskers were pulled off when I threw him down in the canoe,”
Buffalo Bill corrected.
“Ye’re right. It’s a wondher I ricollict annything. The whiskers fell
aff whin ye threw him down. And thin I suppose he got that rickless,
fr’m seein’ that he was rev’aled in his duplicity, that he pulled aff
the wig. He laughed like a young hyena, begorra, whin he did it. The man
was clane cr-razy.”
“An’ we was crazy for comin’ wid ’im!” expostulated Cudjo. “I’se
wonderin’ dat I’se livin’ dis minute.”
“Yez seen him git holt av that rope?” said the Irishman. “Did he know
the rope was there, or did he not? In the evint that he did, thin he was
expictin’ it, and was prepared f’r it; and was ready to jump, before we
got to it. Thin, by the same token, he wasn’t cr-razy, but was a
schemin’ divil, bint on l’adin’ us to desthruction.”
To conclude that Klamath John had deliberately planned to take the great
risk of springing from the canoe to that rope was to credit him with a
daring which bordered on lunacy. Yet that wild laugh, which still rang
in their ears, had been the laugh of a madman, or of a man whose change
from despair to hope had seemed to result temporarily in a sort of
insanity. The whole thing was a mystery.
“Can we belave that letther now?” said Flynn. “And if we can’t belave
it, what thin? Is there gold layin’ r-round in lumps and sphlinters down
in the Golconda Cup? Is there a Golconda Cup at all. And is that pirut
ye call Red Reynard doon there?”
“We’ll know better when we get there.”
“When we git dar?” cried Cudjo. “Marse Cody, you knows we ain’t nebber
gwine git dar!”
“I’m hoping we shall.”
“How you ’specs tuh bring dat combobberation about?” Cudjo demanded.
“We’ll float on down this stream in the canoe, after we get it patched.”
“If we tries it, we is sho’ dead men!” Cudjo protested.
“If we stay here we are dead men.”
“I reckons dat’s so, Marse Cody. We is dead men no matter how yo’ fix
it.”
“I’m niver dead, so long as I’m livin’!” Flynn declared, with true Irish
hopefulness. “This may be Lost River, and it may be the other fork av
it. I dunnaw. But whatever it is, it shore goes somewhere.”
“It goes into de groun’, Marse Flynn. Ain’t we in de ground now? An’ if
we goes furder we suttinly will be mo’ deeper into de ground’, won’t we?
Dis Los’ River is a los’ river, which mean dat it run down into de
yea’th and never come up no mo’. And if we goes wid it, how we gwine tuh
come up? You des ’splain to me dat, will yo’?”
“I ain’t belavin’ it goes down into the earth no great ways, annyhow!”
Flynn protested. “It runs fasht enough here, I know, but that’s no
r’ason it doesn’t come out into the sunlight ag’in. I’m goin’ to stick
to it that it does, begorra! It’s no use to belave anny other way; f’r
if we thried niver so har-rd we couldn’t git back up this sthrame.”
“That’s to be taken as settled,” said Buffalo Bill. “We can’t get back
up the stream. Therefore, if we leave this island, we’ve got to go
downstream, no matter what happens. I think we’d better see if we can’t
patch the canoe.”
He wanted to put Flynn and Cudjo to work, knowing it would help to
bolster their spirits.
It took an hour of close work to patch the hole in the prow.
The stores were lifted out of the canoe and carried to the highest part
of the island, and the canoe was also carried to that point, before work
on it began.
The three men down on their knees, in the flickering candlelight,
working at the canoe, on that dark little island set in the blackness of
the underground river, presented a strange sight. The river roared by