"Missed!" he groaned, as Ralph's upturned face was hurried by.
At the same instant there came a splash that the cow puncher heard even above the roar of the water as it tore through its confines.
Bud glanced quickly round.
Where Jack Merrill had stood a moment before were a pair of shoes, the boy's coat and his shirt.
But Jack had gone—he had jumped to Ralph's rescue. As Bud, with a sharp exclamation of dismay, switched sharply round, he was just in time to see the forms of the two boys swallowed in the darkness of the irrigation tunnel.
[CHAPTER IV.]
THROUGH THE GREAT DARKNESS.
Little given to emotion as he was, Bud Wilson reeled backward as if about to fall, and gripped the woodwork of the sluice till the blood came beneath his nails. His eyes were still riveted on the yawning black mouth of the tunnel, and the white-flecked, yellow water racing into it, when the followers of the chase for life came galloping up, leading the ponies of the two boys who had vanished. Blank looks were exchanged as they learned what had happened.