“No! I won’t keep still, Ruth Fielding. If it hadn’t been for you that Mary Cox would now be at the bottom of these rocks. And she’ll never thank you for saving her life, and for keeping her from killing you and Helen. She doesn’t know how to spell gratitude! Bah!”
“Hush up, Jinny,” commanded Jib, easily. “You’ve got all that off your mind now, and you ought to feel some better. The ponies don’t seem to be hurt much. Some scraped, that’s all. We can go on, I reckon. You ride my hawse, Mr. Cameron, and I’ll sit in yere and drive. Won’t trust these gals alone no more.”
“I guess you could trust Ruth Fielding all right,” cried the loyal Tom. “She did the trick—and showed how plucky she is in the bargain. Did you ever see anything better done than the way she threw that pony?”
Jane Ann ran to the girl of the Red Mill and flung her arms around her neck.
“You’re just as brave as you can be, Ruthie!” she cried. “I don’t know of anybody who is braver. If you’d been brought up right out here in the mountains you couldn’t have done any better—could she, Jib?”
“Miss Fielding certainly showed good mettle,” admitted the Indian, with one of his rare smiles. “And now we’ll go on to the camping place. Don’t let’s have any more words about it, or your fun will all be spoiled. Where’s Ricardo, with the camp stuff? I declare! that Greaser is five miles behind, I believe.”
With which he clucked to the still nervous ponies and, Tom now in the lead, the procession started on in a much more leisurely style.
CHAPTER XI—AN URSINE HOLD-UP
The party of young people were so excited by the adventure that they were scarcely in mind to appreciate the rugged beauty of the cañon. The opposite wall was covered with verdure—hardy trees and shrubs found their rootage in the crevices between the rocks. Some beds of moss, far down where the spray from the river continually irrigated the thin soil, were spangled so thickly with starlike, white flowers that the patches looked like brocaded bedspreads.
Around the elbow in the trail—that sharp turn which had been the scene of the all but fatal accident—the driveway broadened. Far ahead (for the cañon was here quite straight again) they could see the arching roof of rock, surmounted by the primeval forest, which formed the so-called natural bridge. The river tumbled out of the darkness of the tunnel, fretted to a foaming cascade by battling with the boulders which strewed its bed under the roof-rock. The water’s surface gleamed ghostly in the shadow of the arch, and before the opening the arc of a rainbow shone in the spray.