Firewater, balky no longer, gave a mad leap forward. Behind them roared the oncoming flood.
Firewater, balky no longer, gave a mad leap forward. Behind them roared the oncoming flood.
“Make for the high ground!” shouted Pete, “it’s our only chance.”
Jack made no reply, but bent lower over Firewater’s withers, urging the gallant little pony on. But suddenly their flight was checked. And that, too, just as they had reached the comparative safety of the higher ground on the banks of the dry water course which had become so suddenly converted into a menace.
Firewater stuck his foot into a pocket-gopher hole. He struggled bravely to maintain his footing, but what with the heavy load he was carrying and the speed at which he had been suddenly halted, the pony lost his equilibrium. The next instant Jack and Coyote were on the ground while Firewater, thoroughly scared now, dashed off, whinnying wildly in his terror.
Pete, too, was up in a flash, but Jack lay quite still. The force of the fall had stunned him. The cow-puncher caught him up in a jiffy and set off clumsily, running from the menace behind with the unconscious boy in his arms.
But like most men whose lives have been spent in the saddle in our great west, Pete was an indifferent runner. Then, too, his heavy leather “chaps,” which he had not removed while on watch, hampered him.
Before he had run ten yards the onrush of water was upon him and his senseless burden. The irresistible force of the flood swept him from his feet in a flash and bore him on its swirling surface like a chip or a straw. But half stunned, choked and dazed as he was, the cow-puncher clung to Jack. How long he could have continued to do so is doubtful, and this story might have had a far different termination. But something that occurred just at that instant deprived Pete of further responsibility in the matter.
Something struck him a sudden blow in the back of the head and a thousand lights instantly surged and danced before his eyes. As he lost consciousness, Pete felt himself seized by what appeared to be a mass of rough arms or tentacles, and lifted bodily from his feet. Then everything faded from his senses.