“What is the matter?” anxiously asked Bart Witherbee. “Air the boys in trouble?”
“The worst kind of trouble, I am afraid,” breathed Lathrop in a tone of deep concern. “They are in the hands of Luther Barr.”
“Where?”
“On the other side of the canyon.”
CHAPTER XXII.
AN AUTO LEAP FOR LIFE.
What was to be done?
The bridge across the canyon was impassable for an auto—that seemed certain. While the open space caused by the removal of the two planks or rough trunks was not more than four feet, still it was a distance sufficient to make anyone despair of ever getting a vehicle across it.
“We can cut some trees and split off planks?” suggested Mr. Joyce.
“That would take too long,” declared the boys. “Frank and Harry need us in a hurry or they would not have sent such an imperative message. We have got to cross the canyon.”
Suddenly Lathrop, who had been studying the situation, the steep-sided canyon, the roaring river on its rocky bed below the structure of the bridge itself, uttered an exclamation.