And go he did, with a vengeance. It was the finest leap yet made, but, unfortunately, the support upon which he so confidently counted had no existence. Instead of landing on solid stone, he dropped into the raging torrent and went spinning down stream like a cork in a whirlpool.
He kept his presence of mind, and did not exhaust his strength by trying to stem the current. His great peril was in being hurled against some of the rocks and killed or having a limb broken. Throwing out his arms just in time he averted this calamity, and feeling himself scraping swiftly past one of the masses of stone that had served him as a support, he desperately gripped it and drew himself out of the water.
He was uninjured, but became immediately conscious of a great misfortune. In the flurry his Winchester had become displaced and was irrecoverably gone. It was with an exclamation of relief that he found his revolver in place at his hip.
"This expedition of mine, considered strictly as an expedition, is a failure," he grimly muttered, thankful for his own escape, and still convinced that it was not as bad as it might have been with his friend. "It won't do to try it again, and it remains for me to get out of the canyon altogether."
He had landed upon the extreme upper end of the most immense rock of all that had been used to help in the ascent. He remembered it well. The upper portion was depressed and sloping, being three or four feet above the current. Thus it happened that the point to which he was clinging allowed him to be deluged with spray, and he strove to climb to the higher part.
He was thus engaged, conscious of a number of severe bruises, when an object whisked past his shoulder, taking a direction up the gorge. He felt it graze his face, and detected something that can only be described as a deepening of the dense gloom as it shot over his head. It came and vanished like the flitting of a bird's wing.
The youth for the moment was amazed beyond expression, and was at a loss to explain what it could be. Then the truth flashed upon him. Some one else was also going up the canyon, and had leaped from the rock to which Jack was clinging, on his way to the next one. He strove to pierce the darkness, but the effort was useless.
"I would give a good deal to know who he was; I couldn't make out whether it was a white man or an Indian. It may have been Motoza, Tozer, Hank, or a stranger; but whoever he was, he has no use for me."
Half suspecting a third party might put in an appearance, Jack waited on the rock for some minutes, but nothing of the kind occurred, and he prepared to continue his retreat.
The water was almost icy cold, the temperature being perceptibly lower between the walls of the canyon and the clear air outside. With his saturated garments, the youth was chilled and anxious to reach a point where he could start a fire and obtain warmth for his body. He had given over the expectation of seeing any more persons in the gorge and wished to look after his own comfort.