“Hooray, for us!”shouted Joe. “Come on, Phil! Let us run down and see it go into the cañon.”
Away we went; but as the crater-side was pretty steep we had to descend with some caution; whereas the water, having no neck to break, went down headlong. The consequence was that the stream beat us to the cañon by a hundred yards, and by the time we arrived it was pouring over the edge in a sixty-foot cascade.
We were in time, however, to see a wall of foam flying down the cañon; a sight which, while it delighted us, at the same time gave us something of a start.
“Joe!”I cried. “How about our bridge?”
“Pht!”Joe whistled. “I never thought of it. It will go out, I’m afraid. Let us get down there at once.”
Off we ran to where our horse was standing, eating hay out of the back of the buckboard, threw on the harness, hitched him up, and scrambling in, one on either side, away we went as fast as we dared over the uneven, rocky stretch of the mesa which lay between us and home.
The course of the stream being more circuitous than the one we took across country, we beat the water down to the ranch; but only by a few seconds. We had hardly reached the bridge when the swollen stream leaped into the pool in such volume that I felt convinced it would sweep it clear of all the sand in it whether black or yellow; rushed under the bridge, and went tearing down the valley—a sight to see! Luckily the creek-bed was fairly wide and straight, so that the banks did not suffer much.
As to the bridge, the stringers being very long and well set, and the floor being composed of stout poles roughly squared and firmly spiked down, it did not go out, though the water came squirting up between the poles in a way which made us fear it might tear them loose at any moment.
To prevent this, we ran quickly to the stable, harnessed up the mules to the wood-sled, loaded the sled with some of our big flat lava-rocks, and driving back to the bridge, we laid these rocks upon the ends of the poles, leaving a causeway between them wide enough for the passage of a wagon.
We had just finished this piece of work, when we heard a rattle of wheels, and looking up the road we saw coming down the hill an express-wagon, driven by Sam Tobin, a San Remo liveryman, and in the wagon sat my father and mother.