Reaching out as the Red Spider made a vicious lunge, he caught hold of one of the iron crossbars that secured the car to the rope, and held on like grim death. The outlaw, with a shriek of fury, lifted his revolver, and his finger was pressing upon the trigger when the last platform stopped their progress with appalling abruptness. Phil, clinging desperately as he was, narrowly escaped being flung off, and the Mexican, unprepared for the impact, literally hurtled through the air. Over the boy's head he flew, spread-eagled and screaming, and went down—down—down, with the swiftness of a shot bird, and disappeared into the purple mists that veiled the bottom of the cañon from sight. A crash, a single soul-appalling scream, and Red Spider had vanished forever from the sight of men.
Sick at heart, Phil Clode lay for a few minutes without tempting to move. Then he rose cautiously, and, keeping his eyes averted from the dreadful cañon, commenced the descent. Before he had reached the bottom all his natural courage had returned, and he pressed on with renewed energy, inspired by the idea that the outlaw might have left some trail which would lead to his hiding place.
It was black as within a tomb now, for the rocky walls towered up and up higher than the eye could reach.
The track was no more than a smear along the face of the cliff, and Phil began to realize the difficulties that he was to encounter as he proceeded inch by inch, clinging on with teeth and hands, with a thousand-foot drop waiting below. The path, too, grew narrower, and he was just about to relinquish his herculean task in despair when he saw a gleam of light—lantern light—searing the eternal glooms like a streak of fire, and not twenty yards ahead of him as he rounded a sharp bend.
In another minute Red Spider's secret lay revealed.
A square of rock, fitted with powerful hinges, had been opened inward, and the lantern set in the entrance as a guiding light when the outlaw returned. Beyond, the path grew so narrow that it was a human impossibility to scale it; below, until the mysterious catastrophe of its cessation, lay the river, sliding and thundering in cascades and waterfalls, and usually fifty feet or more deep. Phil realized that the passage of Black Cañon was a thing to be dreamed of, and not attempted.
Taking up the lantern, he set off at a brisk pace up the sandy tunnel at the entrance of which it was placed, keeping his eyes open for pitfalls and fissures. The passage led to the right, and perceptibly upward, and ere long he found himself walking parallel with what had once been the river.
After an hour's hard walking he came suddenly into a spacious cave, and found himself gazing once more at the oozing river bed, and at—Red Spider's dam!
Yes, there it was, a great mass of blocks of stone, walling the cañon from side to side, and cunningly diverting the foaming water into a subterranean stream that had been uncovered and channeled for the purpose. Picks and ropes, and blocks of stone, were strewn around in every direction, and just over the mouth of the underground river hung a platform of planking supported by countless ropes, and loaded with a ton or more of cut rock.
Phil was not long in doubt as to its use.