In the Pecos Country by Edward Sylvester Ellis (books to read in your 30s TXT) 📕

Mickey proposed to act upon his own suggestion, which was to go to sleep as soon as the day ended and discuss the many different plans during his slumbers. He had a strong hope that the right one could be hit upon by this method. Somehow or other, his thoughts were fixed upon the stream, where it disappeared under the rocks, and, leaving Fred by the camp-fire, he relit his torch and went off to make another survey.

The lad watched the star-like point of light flickering in the gloom as his friend moved along, holding the torch over his head. It seemed to the watcher that when it paused they were separated by nearly a half mile. The light had an odd way of vanishing and remaining invisible for several minutes that made him think that some accident had befallen the bearer, or that the light had gone out altogether; but after a time it would reappear, dancing about in a way to show that the bearer was not idle in his researches.

Mickey O'Rooney was indeed active. After making his way to the point he was seeking, he shied off to the right, and approached the chasm, down which Fred had lost his rifle. As he stood on the edge of the rent in the fathomless darkness, he loosened a boulder with his foot, and as it toppled over, listened for the result. The way was so narrow that it bounded like a ball from side to side, and the Irishman heard it as it went lower and lower, until at last the strained ear could detect nothing more. There was no sound that came to him to show that it had reached the bottom.

“I s'pose it's going yet,” reflected Mickey, after listening several minutes, “and no doubt it will kaap on till it comes out somewhere in Chiny, which I've been told is on t'other side of the world. Now, why could n't we do the same?” he asked himself, with a sharp turn of the voice. “If that stone is on its way to Chiny, why can't we folly on after it? If we can't reach the crust of the world at this point, what's to hinder our going round by Chiny?—that's what I'd like to know. I wonder how long it would take us? I s'pose we'd get up pretty good steam, and go faster and faster, so that we wouldn't be many days on the road.

“But there's one great objection,” he added, scratching his head and knitting his brow with thought. “There's nothing to stop us from bouncing from side to side like that stone. If the way is rough, we'd be pretty sartin to get our breeches pretty well ripped off us, and by the time we raiched Chiny, we wouldn't be in a condition to be presented in coort; and then, too, I haven't enough money about me to pay my way home again.”

The visionary scheme was one of those which grew less in favor the more he reflected upon it, and, after turning it over for some minutes longer, he was naturally compelled to abandon the idea.

“I must try the stream agin,” he said, as he rose to his feet and groped his way back. “That seems to be the best door, after all, though it ain't the kind I hanker after.”

He thrust one end of the torch in the ground some distance away, and walked to the bank close to the great rock beneath which the stream dove and disappeared. Stooping down, he observed the same dull, white appearance that had caught his eye in the first place. Beyond question this was caused by the sunlight striking the water from the outside.

“I could almost swear that a feller wouldn't have to go more than twenty feet before he'd strike daylight,” mused Mickey, as he folded his arms and looked thoughtfully at the misty relief of the surrounding darkness; “and it would n't take much more to persuade me to make the dive and try it.”

As Mickey stood there, contemplating as best he could the darkly flowing stream, and debating the matter with himself, he was on the very eve of making the attempt fully half a dozen times. It seemed to him that he