There was a blinding dash of spray and mist, and then every horse, with its rider, was carried as quick as a flash off his feet, and shot down the canon like a meteor.
Egbert Rodman, the moment he realized the nature of the danger, reached forward and caught the hand of Lizzie Manning, intending to place her upon the horse, in front of him, as many of the other scouts had done; but ere he could accomplish the transfer, the shock was upon them, and in the stunning, bewildering crash, he was only sensible of going forward with tremendous velocity, down the canon, among his friends, who were all impelled onward by the same resistless force, that made them, for the time, like bits of driftwood heaped in the vortex of the great maelstrom.
“Lizzie! where are you?” he called out, in his agony, groping blindly about him in the tornado of mist, and driftwood, and water; “reach out your hand that I may save you!”
He heard something like an answering cry; but in the rush and whirl, he could not tell the direction nor the point whence it came; and had he known that only a half-dozen feet separated them, it was no more in his power to pass the chasm than it was for him to turn and make headway against the chute that was carrying every thing before it with an inconceivable velocity.
It would be impossible to describe the appalling scene in the canon. Those who lived to tell of it, in after years, shuddered at its recollection and declared that its terror was greater than any through which they had ever passed. The little group who sat waiting and conversing upon their horses had scarcely been caught up and shot forward, when the gloom of the approaching night deepened to that of the most intense, inky blackness, so that no man, speaking literally, could have seen his hand before his face.
It would have made no difference had it been high noon, so far as the question of helping themselves was concerned, although it might have lessened in some degree that shuddering, shivering dread that possessed all, under the expectation every moment of being dashed to fragments against the projecting rocks, or crushed by the debris that was carried tumultuously forward in the rush and whirl of the waters.
“Stick to your hosses, and take things easy!”
The voice of Lightning Jo seemed to come from a point a thousand yards away—whether above or below could not be told by the sound; but all knew that he was somewhere in the torrent, and there was something reassuring in the sound of his ringing voice in this general pandemonium of disaster and death. It encouraged more than one despairing and helpless, and they clung the more tightly and took some courage and hope.
“Jo, can you hear my voice?” called out Egbert Rodman, with the whole strength of his lungs.
“I reckon so,” came back the instant answer.