“When I got down to the water agin, they was not even his little books and measurin’ traps. Ever’thing but the boat was gone in the foam o’ the San Juan. I never knowed whar Moffett was killed. But it was about ten o’clock in the mornin’ I calkerlated—I didn’t have no watch.
“Before I started I et a good meal fur I knowed, the way that river was a boilin’ and roarin’ below me, I was not agoin’ to make no more stops till somepin happened. An’ I didn’t. It happened arter dark. When I couldn’t see no more, an’ it was plum dark down thar long afore the sun went down up on the plains five or six hundred feet above, I shoved off. I didn’t make no bluff at steerin’.
“I jist waited. Mebbe I was not goin’ a few? I shore was sorry I hadn’t stuck to my minin’ idee. I was sorry fur a good many things when the dark come on. I got tired o’ thinkin’ an’ waitin’ at last an’ I says to myself, says I, ‘let her come now an’ git over with it.’ I was accommodated.
“When I come to I was alive, but I didn’t believe it fur a long time. I peeled off the blood an’ by feelin’ round concluded I was on the rocks. But I was so nigh the water that the foam an’ spray was a blanket fur me all night. That’s whar I laid till it come light agin. O’ course the boat was gone, my chuck was gone an’ them walls o’ stone stood up afore and behind me—straight? They seemed like the inside o’ a ball.”
“How did you get out?” asked Roy. “And where were you?”
“I ain’t agoin’ to answer neither,” replied Mr. Weston, crawling over to the fire and using a coal to light his recharged pipe.
“Why ain’t I?” he added without a smile. “’Cause I don’t know. Don’t know no more today ’an I did then. Somehow I did git out. But it was not that day ’cause I slep’ on the rocks agin. I kin tell you this, though: when I fell down on the sand up thar some’ere on the top o’ that gash in the airth, my clo’es was in rags an’ two finger nails on each hand was missin’. I reckon I clumb some.”
“This was not the sink hole, was it?” interrupted the boy.
The plainsman took several long puffs at his pipe.