The Border Boys with the Texas Rangers. Goldfrap John Henry
managed to maintain a foothold, and now he was crouching back on his haunches like a wild–cat about to spring, while in his hands gleamed a wicked looking knife.
Jack had just time to see this when the fellow, hissing out a torrent of Spanish oaths, sprang at him. Jack dodged the knife blow, and before the Mexican could recover his equilibrium the boy’s fist had collided with the lower part of the Mexican’s jaw.
The blow was a heavy one, and had landed fair and square. With a grunt of pain and rage the fellow reeled backward, almost pitching off the raft. But in a jiffy he recovered from his shock and rushed at Jack, snarling like a wild beast.
The boy realized that he was in for a fight for life, and in that moment he bitterly regretted the curiosity that had caused him to board the raft, although he had done it with the idea of performing a service for the Rangers. Now, however, he found himself facing a desperate situation.
Unarmed, and alone, he was on a drifting raft with an armed and singularly ferocious foe.
“Yankee pig!” snarled out the Mexican, as he flung himself at the boy.
Jack’s blood boiled at the insult. It acted as a brace to his sinking heart. As the man lunged at him the boy’s hand struck up the arm that held the knife and the weapon went spinning into the night. But the Mexican, a large man of uncommon strength and activity, did not cease his attack. He rushed at Jack as if to annihilate him.
This was just what Jack wanted. The angrier the Mexican was the worse he would fight, as Jack knew. He met the onrush with coolness, and succeeded in planting two good blows on the man’s body. But muscular as Jack was the blows appeared to have little effect on the Mexican. He tore in more savagely than ever.
Without his knife the Mexican was not much of a fighter. He knew nothing of the art of boxing, and Jack’s “gym” training stood him in good stead. At last, in one of the Mexican’s frantic rushes, Jack’s fist met the point of his chin with deadly effect. With a wild swinging of his arms the fellow reeled backward.
He would have fallen from the raft into the current had not Jack leaped forward and saved him. But the Mexican was a formidable foe no longer. Jack’s blow had effectually stunned him for a time, and as the boy saved him from pitching overboard he sank in a heap on the floor of the raft.
In the first opportunity he had had for observation of his situation since the raft had got loose, Jack looked about him. Then, for the first time, he realized that the rough craft was proceeding at an extremely swift rate. It was spinning round dizzily, too, as though caught in some sort of whirlpool.
Jack was still wondering how far they had come and what was to be the outcome of this odd adventure, when something happened that effectually put all other thoughts out of his head.
The air became filled with a roaring sound, and spray began to dash upon the floor of the raft. With a sharp thrill of alarm Jack recognized that the roaring sound was the voice of a waterfall, and that the raft was being swept toward it at lightning speed. He seized up one of the oars and attempted to head the raft for the shore. But the oar might have been a straw for all the effect it had against that rapid current.
All at once it snapped, almost hurling Jack overboard. The next instant raft, boy and unconscious man were swept into a vortex of waters. Jack felt himself falling through space. Simultaneously there came a crashing blow on his head. A million constellations seemed to swim before his eyes, and then, with a blinding flash of fire, his senses left him.
CHAPTER VI.
THE POOL OF DEATH
The blow that had been dealt the boy came from one of the timbers of the raft, which had been torn to pieces as it was swept over the falls. How long Jack remained insensible he did not know; but when he recovered his senses he found himself struggling in a seething pool of water at the foot of the falls. Luckily he was able to catch hold of one of the logs of the raft as it was swept by him, and clinging to this he began to strike out with his legs, hoping to make his way to the edge of the pool.
Many times during that desperate struggle for existence Jack felt certain that death would intervene before he could accomplish his purpose. Once another log, that was being swept round like a straw in that boiling vortex of foaming waters, was dashed against the one to which he clung. The shock almost forced the lad to relinquish his hold. But he hung on like grim death.
Blinded by foam and half choked, the boy, with bull–dog grit, stuck to his purpose, and at last was rewarded by feeling ground under his feet. A moment later, bruised, breathless and drenched to the skin, he flung himself panting on the sandy shore of the pool, too exhausted to move further.
He lay there, actually feeling more dead than alive, for a long time before he felt capable of moving. But at last he found strength to drag himself further up the bank. Fumbling in his pocket, he found that his water–tight match box was in its proper place, and in the darkness he set about making preparations to build a fire. Luckily, on the brink of the pool there was any quantity of dry wood cast up by the maelstrom of waters, and the boy soon had a roaring blaze kindled. Stripping to his underclothing he hung his other garments on sticks in front of the blaze while he basked in its cheery rays.
By the glow he could see a part of the pool, and as he gazed at its troublous surface and foaming fury he marveled that he had been able to escape with his life. The firelight also showed him that he was in a sort of rock–walled bowl, with steeply sloping sides scantily clad in places with stunted bushes. He was still sitting by this fire, trying to think of some way out of his dilemma, when exhausted nature asserted herself and he sank into a deep slumber beside the warm blaze.
When he awoke the sun was shining down on his face. The daylight showed him that he had blundered into an astonishing place indeed. As he had guessed, by what he could see of the place by firelight, he was at the bottom of a rocky bowl into which the falls over which he had tumbled roared and thundered unceasingly as they had been doing for uncounted centuries.
Jack estimated the height of the falls as being fully sixty feet. The boiling pool appeared to be about an acre or so in extent, and was furiously agitated by the constant pouring of the mighty falls. And now Jack became aware of a curious thing.
All about the edges of the pool, where the circular motion of the water had evidently cast them up, were myriads of bones. They appeared to be the remains of cattle and various kinds of game; but some of them caused Jack to shudder as he had a distinct notion that they were of human origin.
All at once, while he was still exploring the strange place into which he had fallen, he came across a bleached skull lying amid a pile of bones and débris. The ghastly relic gave him a rude shock as he gazed at it.
“Gracious!” the boy exclaimed, with a shudder, “this place might well be called a Pool of Death. How fortunate I am to be alive; although how I am going to get out of this scrape I don’t know. One thing is certain, I cannot remount by the falls. I must see what lies in the other direction.”
Up to that moment, so agitated had the castaway boy been that he had almost entirely forgotten the Mexican with whom he had had the battle on the raft. The thought of the man now suddenly recurred to him. Jack sighed as he realized that the Mexican could hardly have been so fortunate as he had been. In all probability he had forfeited his life to the Pool of Death.
With such melancholy thoughts in his mind Jack set about exploring the rocky basin for some means of exit. Although he was determined not to give way to despair, the boy could not but own that his situation was well–nigh desperate. He was many miles from his friends, and probably in an uninhabited part of the country. He had no food; nor even if there had been any game had he the means of shooting it.
His hunger was now beginning to make itself painfully manifest. On some bushes that clung to the walls of the Pool of Death were some bright–colored berries, but Jack dreaded to try them. For all he knew they might be deadly poison.
Searching for an exit, Jack was not long in finding one. The pool was drained by a narrow crevice in the rocky walls, forming a passage. On the brink of the water was a strip of beach, not much wider than a man’s hand. Beside this pathway the water roared and screamed in its narrow bounds, but Jack knew that