"Thank you. I will leave the paddle on the shore."
With this exchange of civilities Henry walked down to the pool. Selecting a lid of a packing-box, he shaped a rude paddle with his pocket-knife. An idea had occurred to him. He wondered if he could not float down the river to the racing-ground, and get a peep at Chiquita and Sancho as they came in victors; for he felt sure no ponies in Arizona could beat them. But the Lieutenant had told the escort not to go to the race. True. But what harm could there be if he kept out of sight; and there must be some bushes or hummocks on the river-bank where he could conceal himself. He determined to try it. If there was no shelter, he could float past, land below, abandon the balsa, and return to town by a circuitous route.
Placing an empty box on the raft for a seat, he took Vic on board, and began paddling out of the lagoon. Speed could not be got out of such a craft. It was simply a convenience for crossing or journeying down the river. The Mojaves, whose village was five miles above La Paz, came down on freshly made balsas every day, but walked home, carrying their paddles.
Snatched by the rippling and undulating current of the murky river, the boy and dog were swept along at a swift rate. By using his paddle vigorously he kept near the shore, until, sweeping around a bend, he saw the steamer Cocopah tied up to the bank, and realized that if he did not quickly work out a piece his sheaf of cane-grass would be carried under her bow. It proved a desperate struggle, and he cleared the steamboat with no space to spare.
He floated swiftly on, and saw half a mile down the shore a crowd of men, mounted and on foot, intently watching something inland. He was approaching the race-course. He made a landing on a sand spit that struck off from an outward curve of the bank, and dragged the balsa out of the water.
The shore rose abruptly from the bar to a height two feet above his head. He lifted and boosted Vic up, and seizing the long tufts of overhanging grass, and thrusting his feet into the loops of willow roots, drew himself to the higher level, and crept into a screen of low bushes.
Peering through the branches Henry saw a straightaway course, parallel to the river, bordered for three hundred yards with the motley crowd of a mining and Indian country. At the northern end of the track was a group of ten ponies.
Eager to obtain an unobstructed view of the race, the boy dashed for a gnarled cottonwood on his left, ordered Vic to lie down at its foot, and swung himself into its branches. Climbing into the top, he found no difficulty in picking out two ponies, a black and a cream-color, and recognizing the property of his brother and himself. In his opinion they were the handsomest animals in the group.
At the fourth signal—a pistol-shot—the ten ponies got away. Down the three-hundred-yard track they sped, and over the last fourth the black and cream-color led by a length, crossing the goal with Sancho half a neck in advance. Of course the little sergeant knew they would beat, and in spite of his sorrow at the loss of the ponies—intensified by this stolen sight of them—he could not refrain from swinging his cap, and uttering a subdued, "Bravo, Sancho! bravita, Chiquita!"