Paul Bird had to clinch his teeth until his lips bled in order to master the deadly fear that gripped his very soul and made him feel sick. In imagination he was picturing the scene Lanky had drawn when he spoke so jokingly about "swimming down on the boiling flood to be swept out into the little valley with broken bones and life extinct."
So far as Frank could see, those grim and lofty and forbidding walls continued to hem them in on either side—utterly unscalable, and looking like the jaws of a trap that was destined to be their doom. But he felt positive that Jerry knew of some avenue of escape from the canyon, if only they were given the time required to reach the opening. Once the flood caught up with them, all would be lost.
He had never looked upon such a spectacle in all his life, but he understood that the first wave might be something like ten feet high, and making the descent of the abrupt mountainside with incredible velocity, so that it was bound to carry horses and human being off their feet when it struck them, and as the downpour still continued the chances were that the torrent would gain additional volume with every rod it rushed along.
On the fugitives pressed, making better time than could have been attained under any other conditions, for there is nothing equal to the dread of death to spur men and beasts on to herculean efforts.
Fortunately none of the ponies had thus far stumbled. Although the time lost by such an accident might be only the fraction of a minute, even such a brief delay was apt to cost them dear when the race was so close. Frank's pony seemed to lag a bit, having hit upon a section of ground that was rougher than the rest, being strewn with more loose rocks, and in this way the lad found himself the last member of the sextette.
In a flight such as this, it is usually every one for himself, since there is no time given to double-up. As Lanky would have stated it, "Every chap must look out for himself."
Jerry was calling out now at the top of his voice, and despite all the other booming sounds they could catch the drift of his words, meant solely to encourage them at this crisis.
"It's right ahead of us! We're bound to git thar all hunk! Keep a-goin' like hot cakes, fellers! I know whar I'm at, yuh kin bet yuh boots!"
He finished this rush of shouted words with his familiar old cowboy yell, as if to defy the rush of the flood and the fury of the summer storm.
If they attained their goal and managed to get out of reach of the avalanche of water, it would be by the skin of their teeth. Lanky could not have uttered a word just then, no matter how desperately he tried, for his lips felt as dry as those of a fever-stricken mule-skinner in a caravan, and his breath was coming in pants, as of a hound that had run a long race in chase of a hare.