“Snake Island!” exclaimed old Hance. “It’s been many years since I heard that name. Many, many years.”
“But is there any such place?” asked Jerry.
“Is there? Bless you, I don’t know, son. I’ll tell you as much as I can, however. It must have been forty years ago, and there weren’t many tourists in them days. Mostly Indians. I was making my way along the canyon with an Indian, for in them days I had a notion I’d like to discover things. Well, as you know, the canyon is narrow and steep in places, and when it rains you want to make tracks, for the river sometimes rises thirty feet in a short time. If you’re caught where you can’t climb up, well—it’s good-bye for yours.
“A thunderstorm came up while the Indian and I were in a narrow part of the canyon, where the river rushed along between black walls like a mill stream down the flume. We knew we’d have to make tracks out of there, and we did. But the rain came faster than we’d calculated on, and we had to climb. Then came a fog that nearly did for us. We managed to get some distance down the stream, and then climbed up the steep sides of the chasm until we came to a niche in the wall. There we stayed until the river went down, and we were there a day and a night, with nothing to eat.”
“But about the Snake Island?” asked Jerry.
“The island. Oh yes. Well, when we were hiding there in the hole in the wall, there came a rift in the fog. I happened to be looking down stream, and I saw something big and black rearing up, right from the river it seemed. I poked the Indian in the ribs—he was half asleep, you know—Indians’ll sleep anywhere if they think they’ve got to—anyhow I poked him, and he grunted and woke up. I pointed to the tall, black, wiggling thing, and the Indian said: ‘Snake Island.’
“‘Snake!’ I yelled. ‘Who ever see a snake as big as that?’ Then he grunted some more, and went on to say that there was a sort of stone island in the middle of the river. It had been pretty well worn away except a big hill and a tall thing, like a tower, that stuck up in the middle, like a church steeple. It was this tall tower of black rock that seemed like a snake. Of course the fog made it indistinct, and the motion of the mist made it appear as if it was wiggling about. So that’s all I know about Snake Island. I never went there, and I never heard of anyone getting on it.”
“There was a party of college men——” began Uriah Snodgrass.
“Oh, yes, I heard about them. But they never got there, and one of their number was lost. I tell you Snake Island is in a bad part of the river.”
“But just where is it?” asked Jerry.