In some manner Saleratus Bill had discovered the young man's escape, and had already eliminated the other possibilities of his direction of flight. Bob shuddered2 at this evidence of the rapidity with which the expert trailer had arrived at the correct conclusion. He could not now skirt the mountain, as he had intended, for that would at once expose him in full view; he could not return by the way he had come, for that would bring him face to face with his enemy. It would avail him little to surrender, for the gun-man would undoubtedly3 make good his threats; fidelity4 to such pledges is one of the few things sacred to the race. With some vague and desperate idea of defence, Bob picked up a heavy branch of driftwood. Then, as the man drew nearer, Bob scrambled6 hastily over the smooth apron7 to the tiny beach that the eddies8 had washed out below the precipice9.
Here for the moment he was hidden, but he did not flatter himself he would long remain so. He cast his eyes about him for a way of escape. To the one side was the river, in front of him was the rock apron with his enemy, to the other side and back of him was a sheer precipice. In his perplexity he looked down. A gleam of metal caught his eye. He stooped and picked up the half of a worn horseshoe. Even in his haste of mind, he cast a passing wonderment on how it had come there.
If Bob had not been trained by his river work in the ways of currents, he might sooner have thought of the stream. But well he knew that Saleratus Bill had spoken right when he had said that there were "no swimming holes" here. The strongest swimmer could not have taken two strokes in that cauldron of seething10 white water. But now, as Bob looked, he saw that a little back eddy11 along the perpendicularity12 of the cliff slowed the current close to the sheer rock. It might be just possible, with luck, to win far enough along this cliff to lie concealed13 behind some outjutting boulder14 until Saleratus Bill had examined the beach and gone his way. Bob was too much in haste to consider the unexplained tracks he must leave on the sand.
He thrust the branch he carried into the still black water. To his surprise it hit bottom at a foot's depth. Promptly15 he waded17 in. Sounding ahead, he walked on. The underwater ledge5 continued. The water never came above his knees. Out of curiosity he tapped with his branch until he had reached the edge of the submerged shelf. It proved to be some four feet wide. Beyond it the water dropped off sheer, and the current nearly wrenched18 the staff from Bob's hand.
In this manner he proceeded cautiously for perhaps a hundred feet. Then he waded out on another beach.
He found himself in a pocket of the cliffs, where the precipice so far drew back as to leave a clear space of four or five acres in the river bottom. Such pockets, or "coves," are by no means unusual in the inaccessible19 depths of the great box canons of the Sierras. Often the traveller can look down on them from above, lying like green gems20 in their settings of granite21, but rarely can he descend22 to examine them. Thankfully Bob darted23 to one side. Here for a moment he might be safe, for surely no one not driven by such desperation as his own would dream of setting foot in the river.
A loud snort almost at his elbow, and a rush of scurrying24 shapes, startled him almost into crying aloud. Then out into the moonlight from the shadow of the cliffs rushed two horses. And Bob, seeing what they were, sprang from his fancied security into instant action, for in a flash he saw the significance of the broken horseshoe on the beach, the sunken ledge, and the secret of the horses' pasture. By sheer chance he had blundered on one of Saleratus Bill's outlaw25 retreats.
Hastily he skirted the walls of the tiny valley. They were unbroken. The river swept by tortured and tumbled. He ran to the head of the cove1. No sunken ledge there rewarded him. Instead, the river at that point swept inward, so that the full force of the current washed the very shores.
Bob searched the prospect26 with eager eye. Twelve or fifteen feet upstream, and six or seven feet out from the cliff, stood a huge round boulder. That alone broke the shadowy expanse of the river, which here rushed down with great velocity27. Manifestly it was impossible to swim to this boulder. Bob, however, conceived a daring idea. At imminent28 risk and by dint29 of frantic30 scrambling31 he worked his way along the cliff until he had gained a point opposite the boulder and considerably32 above it. Then, without hesitation33, he sprang as strongly as he was able sidewise from the face of the cliff.
He landed on the boulder with great force, so that for a moment he feared he must have broken some bones. Certainly his breath was all but knocked from his body. Spread out flat on the top of the rock, he moved his limbs cautiously. They seemed to work all right. He backed cautiously until he lay outspread on the upstream slope of the boulder. At just this moment he caught the sinister34 figure of Saleratus Bill moving along the sunken ledge.
For the first time Bob remembered the tracks he must have left and the man's skill at trailing. A rapid review of his most recent actions reassured35 him at one point; in order to gain to the first of the minor36 cliff projections38 by means of which he had spread-eagled along the face of the rock, he had been forced to step into the very shallow water at the stream's edge. Thus his last footprints led directly into the river.
The value of this impression, conjoined with the existence of a ledge below over which he had already waded safely, was not lost on Bob's preception. As has been stated, his earlier experience in river driving had given him an intimate knowledge of the action of currents. Casting his eye hastily down the moonlit river, he seized his hat from his head and threw it low and skimming toward an eddy opposite him as he lay. The river snatched it up, tossed it to one side or another, and finally carried it, as Bob had calculated, within a few feet of the ledge along which Saleratus Bill was still making his way.
The gun-man, of course, caught sight of it, and even made an attempt to capture it as it floated past, but without avail. It served, however, to prepossess his mind with the idea that Bob had been swept away by the river, so that when, after a careful examination of the tiny cove, he came to the trail leading into the water, he was prepared to believe that the young man had been carried off his feet in an attempt to wade16 out past the cliff. He even picked up a branch, with which he poked39 at the bottom. A short and narrow rock projection37 favoured his hypothesis, for it might very well happen that merely an experimental venture on so slanting40 and slippery a footing would prove fatal. Saleratus Bill examined again for footprints emerging; threw his branch into the river, and watched the direction of its course; and then, for the first time, slipped the worn and shiny old revolver into its holster. He spent several moments more reexamining the cove, glanced again at the river, and finally disappeared, wading41 slowly back around the sunken ledge.
Bob's next task was to regain42 solid land. For some minutes he sat astride the boulder, estimating the force and directions of the current. Then he leaped. As he had calculated, the stream threw him promptly against the bank below. There his legs were immediately sucked beneath the overhanging rock that had convinced Saleratus Bill of his captive's fate. It seemed likely now to justify43 that conviction. Bob clung desperately44, until his muscles cracked, but was unable so far to draw his legs from underneath45 the rock as to gain a chance to struggle out of water. Indeed, he might very well have hung in that equilibrium46 of forces until tired out, had not a slender, water-washed alder47 root offered itself to his grasp. This frail48 shrub49, but lightly rooted, nevertheless afforded him just the extra support he required. Though he expected every instant that the additional ounces of weight he from moment to moment applied50 to it would tear it away, it held. Inch by inch he drew himself from the clutch of the rushing water, until at length he succeeded in getting the broad of his chest against the bank. A few vigorous kicks then extricated51 him.
For a moment or so he lay stretched out panting, and considering what next was to be done. There was a chance, of course--and, in view of Saleratus Bill's shrewdness, a very strong chance--that the gun-man would add to his precautions a wait and a watch at the entrance to the cove. If Bob were to wade out around the ledge, he might run fairly into his former jailer's gun. On the other hand, Saleratus Bill must be fairly well convinced of the young man's destruction, and he must be desirous of changing his wet clothes. Bob's own predicament, in this chill of night, made him attach much weight to this latter consideration. Besides, any delay in the cove meant more tracks to be noticed when the gun-man should come after the horses. Bob, his teeth chattering52, resolved to take the chance of instant action.
Accordingly he waded back along the sunken ledge, glided53 as quickly as he could over the rock apron, and wormed his way through the grasses to the dry wash leading up the side of the mountains. Here fortune had favoured him, and by a very simple, natural sequence. The moon had by an hour sailed farther to the west; the wash now lay in shadow.
Bob climbed as rapidly as his wind would let him, and in that manner avoided a chill. He reached the road at a broad sheet of rock whereon his footsteps left no trace. After a moment's consideration, he decided54 to continue directly up the mountainside through the thick brush. This travel must be uncertain and laborious55; but if he proceeded along the road, Saleratus Bill must see the traces he would indubitably leave. In the obscurity of the shady side of the mountain he found his task even more difficult than he had thought possible. Again and again he found himself puzzled by impenetrable thickets56, impassable precipices57, rough outcrops barring his way. By dint of patience and hard work, however, he gained the top of the mountain. At sunrise he looked back into Bright's Cove. It lay there peacefully deserted58, to all appearance; but Bob, looking very closely, thought to make out smoke. The long thread of the road was quite vacant.
1 cove | |
n.小海湾,小峡谷 | |
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2 shuddered | |
v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 );发抖;(机器、车辆等)突然震动;颤动 | |
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3 undoubtedly | |
adv.确实地,无疑地 | |
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4 fidelity | |
n.忠诚,忠实;精确 | |
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5 ledge | |
n.壁架,架状突出物;岩架,岩礁 | |
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6 scrambled | |
v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 );攀登;争夺;(军事飞机)紧急起飞 | |
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7 apron | |
n.围裙;工作裙 | |
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8 eddies | |
(水、烟等的)漩涡,涡流( eddy的名词复数 ) | |
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9 precipice | |
n.悬崖,危急的处境 | |
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10 seething | |
沸腾的,火热的 | |
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11 eddy | |
n.漩涡,涡流 | |
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12 perpendicularity | |
n.垂直,直立;垂直度 | |
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13 concealed | |
a.隐藏的,隐蔽的 | |
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14 boulder | |
n.巨砾;卵石,圆石 | |
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15 promptly | |
adv.及时地,敏捷地 | |
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16 wade | |
v.跋涉,涉水;n.跋涉 | |
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17 waded | |
(从水、泥等)蹚,走过,跋( wade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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18 wrenched | |
v.(猛力地)扭( wrench的过去式和过去分词 );扭伤;使感到痛苦;使悲痛 | |
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19 inaccessible | |
adj.达不到的,难接近的 | |
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20 gems | |
growth; economy; management; and customer satisfaction 增长 | |
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21 granite | |
adj.花岗岩,花岗石 | |
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22 descend | |
vt./vi.传下来,下来,下降 | |
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23 darted | |
v.投掷,投射( dart的过去式和过去分词 );向前冲,飞奔 | |
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24 scurrying | |
v.急匆匆地走( scurry的现在分词 ) | |
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25 outlaw | |
n.歹徒,亡命之徒;vt.宣布…为不合法 | |
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26 prospect | |
n.前景,前途;景色,视野 | |
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27 velocity | |
n.速度,速率 | |
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28 imminent | |
adj.即将发生的,临近的,逼近的 | |
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29 dint | |
n.由于,靠;凹坑 | |
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30 frantic | |
adj.狂乱的,错乱的,激昂的 | |
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31 scrambling | |
v.快速爬行( scramble的现在分词 );攀登;争夺;(军事飞机)紧急起飞 | |
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32 considerably | |
adv.极大地;相当大地;在很大程度上 | |
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33 hesitation | |
n.犹豫,踌躇 | |
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34 sinister | |
adj.不吉利的,凶恶的,左边的 | |
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35 reassured | |
adj.使消除疑虑的;使放心的v.再保证,恢复信心( reassure的过去式和过去分词) | |
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36 minor | |
adj.较小(少)的,较次要的;n.辅修学科;vi.辅修 | |
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37 projection | |
n.发射,计划,突出部分 | |
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38 projections | |
预测( projection的名词复数 ); 投影; 投掷; 突起物 | |
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39 poked | |
v.伸出( poke的过去式和过去分词 );戳出;拨弄;与(某人)性交 | |
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40 slanting | |
倾斜的,歪斜的 | |
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41 wading | |
(从水、泥等)蹚,走过,跋( wade的现在分词 ) | |
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42 regain | |
vt.重新获得,收复,恢复 | |
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43 justify | |
vt.证明…正当(或有理),为…辩护 | |
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44 desperately | |
adv.极度渴望地,绝望地,孤注一掷地 | |
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45 underneath | |
adj.在...下面,在...底下;adv.在下面 | |
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46 equilibrium | |
n.平衡,均衡,相称,均势,平静 | |
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47 alder | |
n.赤杨树 | |
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48 frail | |
adj.身体虚弱的;易损坏的 | |
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49 shrub | |
n.灌木,灌木丛 | |
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50 applied | |
adj.应用的;v.应用,适用 | |
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51 extricated | |
v.使摆脱困难,脱身( extricate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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52 chattering | |
n. (机器振动发出的)咔嗒声,(鸟等)鸣,啁啾 adj. 喋喋不休的,啾啾声的 动词chatter的现在分词形式 | |
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53 glided | |
v.滑动( glide的过去式和过去分词 );掠过;(鸟或飞机 ) 滑翔 | |
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54 decided | |
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的 | |
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55 laborious | |
adj.吃力的,努力的,不流畅 | |
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56 thickets | |
n.灌木丛( thicket的名词复数 );丛状物 | |
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57 precipices | |
n.悬崖,峭壁( precipice的名词复数 ) | |
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58 deserted | |
adj.荒芜的,荒废的,无人的,被遗弃的 | |
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