The Boy With the U. S. Survey Part 14

"I don't believe any of us would be comfortable to-night," he said, "knowing that the lad was down there, when for all we know he may be dying of starvation and the loneliness of desolation, just within our reach. A bite to eat, whatever there is, and then an immediate start."

Gathered to the hasty and scanty supper, the cook found himself in a position of extreme discomfort, though no blame was attached to him. He had acted for the best and this result could not have been foreseen.

Perhaps it was because his nerves were unusually upon the strain that he was the first to hear a sound along the chasm. He held up his hand to enjoin silence, and in a moment or two horses' hoofs and voices were heard. Then, looming unnaturally large in the last flush of twilight before the darkness fell, came two figures, one on a tall iron-gray horse, one on a mule, with a burro plodding along patiently behind.

A stentorian voice hailed them from the distance.

"Hey, there!" it said.

"Well?" called back Ma.s.seth.

The second of the oncomers answered, this time in a boy's voice.

"Oh, Mr. Ma.s.seth, have you been back long?"

"It's the boy," said the topographer solemnly, but with a note of joy in his voice, "and his life won't be laid at my door;" the soberness of words and tone revealing how keenly the fear of Roger's peril had been pressing on him.

When the two rode up the boy introduced his frontiersman friend to the chief of the party, the while he was being untied from the saddle, to which, in his still exhausted and stiffened state, he had been fastened.

But introductions, however informal, did not stop the big Westerner from speaking his mind.

"I'm thinkin' there's some thunderin' big fools in this here party," he announced in his abrupt way, "that can get matters into such a hole that a youngster has to start off on a crazy trip like that, but I want to state that the boy is pay dirt all through. He's not only crossed the Canyon alone, but he's found a new trail!"

"Where?" asked Ma.s.seth eagerly, thinking it wiser to ignore the stranger's criticism rather than debate the point.

"Down Bright Angel Canyon, Mr. Ma.s.seth," answered the boy. "It wasn't so awfully bad, except in a few places."

"But how did you get through?"

"I went down by the spring," answered Roger, "keeping to the right, until I got wedged in between two cliffs, pink in color with a broad band of slate blue about two-thirds of the way up."

"That's usually a bad wall!" interjected Ma.s.seth. "How did you cross it?"

Roger described the device he had used, and received the encomiums of all his comrades for the work, and then, as briefly as he could, gave an outline of the various points of interest on the way.

He was especially gratified, when, after telling how he had got out of the pocket of rock, Ma.s.seth turned to his a.s.sistant.

"We'll chart that as Doughty Point," he said, "for the boy's sake."

The boy flushed with delight at having his name given to a part of the country, just like a real explorer, and cast a grateful look at his chief.

"It was just beyond that that I struck water. The ravine sloped abruptly for about one hundred feet, then struck an upcurving rock and gave a little jump like a fellow does on skis and fell like a long silver ribbon for about two hundred feet. I suppose that is Bright Angel Creek?"

"And rightly named," put in the a.s.sistant topographer, nodding his head affirmatively, "any stream that doesn't run dry in this sort of country is angelic, all right."

Roger continued his story of the trip, describing points which he had noted, Ma.s.seth naming them, "Deva Temple," "Brahma Temple," "Zoroaster Temple," etc., and at last he fixed the route by its relation to "Cheops Pyramid," one of the well-known configurations of the Canyon.

"But on which side of the creek were you, when you saw the pyramid?"

asked the chief.

"On the other side from it," answered Roger.

"If you had only crossed once more, or once less, it would have brought you to the main trail where the boat is," said Ma.s.seth regretfully.

"But how in the world did you cross?"

So Roger told the story of the burro, and the manner in which he had been caught in the crotch of a snag; and the party, though old hands at the business, hung on his tale as though they had been so many greenhorns. He told, moreover, as well as he could, his route up the other side, until the frontiersman took up the story from the point where the lad had been seen by the spectators on the edge of the Canyon, near the hotel.

The last few sentences of the boy's story had been somewhat incoherent, for the long trip of that day, following his arduous experiences alone had been too much for him, and he could not keep his eyes open. He was promptly taken to his tent and bidden to sleep, the while the frontiersman described enthusiastically the boy's pluck and nerve.

"And I thought, by thunder," he concluded, "that the overschooled kids of this generation were a pack of milksops, but I see there's grit in an American boy yet!"

CHAPTER VIII

THE LAND WHERE IT NEVER RAINS

It was well on in the afternoon of the next day when Roger woke, to find his friend the frontiersman bustling about the camp. He came sharply when the boy hailed him.

"See here, lad," he said, "I figured that a rest wouldn't hurt you any, so I told the thin fellow that if you stayed on here a while, I didn't have much on hand, and I'd keep you company. Jest to watch that you didn't get up in the middle of the night and try and find some other new trail. So it's you and me for a few days, and I guess that teamster of yours ought to show up soon, because, of course, he doesn't know anythin' about what's been goin' on."

A couple of lazy weeks pa.s.sed by rapidly, lazy because the Westerner insisted on doing all the work that needed to be done, and before they were over Roger found that he had nearly regained his full strength, his wiry frame recuperating without loss of vitality. Ma.s.seth, on his return, was much gratified to find how well the boy had got along, and the following week he took him alone to one of the most prominent stations on the northern side.

"Now, Roger," Ma.s.seth said to him, "I've just about finished what I want to do on this side, so I'm going across to run a level on the other side. But I'm very anxious to get a clear sight of this peak, where we're standing, for an extensive triangulation, in order to correct or rather verify some results. The only way in which this can be done is to flash a heliograph message to me, at a certain time on a certain day, in the way I showed you last week."

"Across seven miles?" asked the boy in amazement.

"More than that," said his chief, smiling. "Now here is the way you had better get at it. In this box, which you see has been securely fastened to the rock, are two pieces of tin, one with a quarter of an inch hole in it, the other with a hole an inch square. They point, with mathematical correctness, to a peak on the other side, which is an old station, and easily seen. If you look through, you can see the place."

Roger bent down, and looking through the aperture was able to determine a slight projection on the far distant bank, which he described and which was in verity the point sought.

"Now," continued Ma.s.seth, "two months hence, or to be more exact, sixty days from now, at eight o'clock in the morning, I will be waiting at that point on the other side, and I shall expect you to be here. Over the further piece of tin, as you see, I have hung a cloth, which you can drop while you are testing the gla.s.s. In this movable frame, so devised that it can be screwed up or down, or s.h.i.+fted slightly sideways, arrange the gla.s.s so that the reflection of it, s.h.i.+ning through the larger hole, appears at an equal distance on all sides of the smaller opening. You understand me?"

"Quite, Mr. Ma.s.seth," answered the boy, who had been listening with all his ears.

"Very well," the older man continued. "At eight o'clock sharp, then, you will raise quickly the curtain in front of the smaller hole, and drop it again, doing this three times, allowing the hole to remain open for ten seconds each time. Do that every five minutes for half an hour, or six times in all, to allow for any possible variation of time in your watch.

By the way, you had better have two watches in the event of one of them stopping or the hands catching, or something of that sort, because a month's work will depend on getting that signal. But I think I can trust you."

"You can, indeed, Mr. Ma.s.seth," said Roger. "But what shall I be doing during those two months? Am I to remain alone in camp?"

"Hardly," said his chief, smiling. "The Survey does not waste men that way. Mr. Mitchon has written me that Mr. Herold desires you should have an insight into the varied work of the department, and I have arranged for another topographic aid to meet me on the other side, so that, except for this heliograph signal, which I must remind you is excessively important, you will have finished with the work here."

"Then what?"

"Death Valley and the Mohave Desert," replied his chief. "It is perhaps a little hard to send you into a hot section of the country at this time of year, but, you see, you cannot go too far away because of your engagement with the sun on a morning two months hence--by the way, if it is cloudy, which is so rare a contingency as scarcely to be reckoned on, signal the next morning at the same hour--so you must stay near by, and the most interesting work at hand is that being done in the waterless country."

[Ill.u.s.tration: TWENTY-SEVEN MILES FROM WATER.