THE RED SPIDER.

"This," said Phil Clode, setting down his bag, "is the limit!"

Having given vent to which expressive remark, he laughed to himself and gazed round upon the most desolate scene that it had ever been his fortune to behold. Behind him stood a small, wooden erection, not unlike an enlarged run, which was, however, dignified by the name of station. For the rest, a clove-brown plain stretched away to infinity, marred only by the shining ribbons of the railway track and an occasional clump of cactus or greaseweed.

"The limit," the boy repeated solemnly. "Hullo! there's a man, or something very like one. I will get a line on to his vicinity, and try to extract a little useful information."

Picking up his grip, he hustled over to where a specimen of the cowboy genus had lounged from behind the station, leading a broncho that looked rather the worse for wear. Phil, as he approached, saw that a bag branded with the sign "U. S. Mail" was slung over the beast's saddle, and his eyes brightened. He knew that even in that deserted region of Colorado any servant of Uncle Sam's could be trusted.

"Say," he sang out. "Can you give me any notion where I am, mister? I was told to get off at Silver Bridge, and here I am right enough, but I can't see much sign of the town."

"You on foot?" the other returned with undisguised astonishment. "You must be stark——"

"Broncho waiting for me at Silver Bridge," Phil interrupted shortly. He had urgent reasons for not wishing to talk about his private affairs.

"So?" the man muttered with a sidelong glance. He had a pleasant face, rough but good humored, and the lad took to him instinctively. "You're an Easterner, ain't yeh?"

"Yes, and proud of it."

"That's all right. I'm from the East, too, only I've been here so long that yeh wouldn't think it. I guess yeh'd better hop up behind me, pardner. Betsy's a game chicken—she's carried three before now."

"You going to Silver Bridge, then?" Phil queried as the cowboy stroked the unprepossessing broncho fondly.

"I should smile. I'm cattle tender to the ore-crushing plant there."

Phil received this information with a start, but made no remark. In silence he mounted behind the man, who gave his name as Idaho Bart, and felt with some surprise the plain bumping rapidly away beneath them, as the broncho, becoming a bunch of throbbing muscles, pounded eastward with the regularity of tirelessness of a steam engine.

The mail rider did not seem disposed to let the silence continue. Out West curiosity about another man's affairs is usually the signal for gun play, but Idaho Bart proceeded to break the rule by a series of interrogations of the most pointed and particular description.

Phil Clode, however, was old for his years, and he met him at every point, giving a false name, and a reason for his arrival at Silver Bridge that was so obviously wide of the truth that the mail carrier, having turned in the saddle to fix him with a twinkling eye, emitted a short laugh, and relapsed into taciturnity.

This muteness remained undisturbed until they were in sight of Silver Bridge, the big ore-crushing town, the shares of which, back in Wall Street, were at a premium. It appeared suddenly as they topped a swelling hill that surrounded two sides of the city like a wall, and Phil surveyed it with the curiosity of first acquaintance. It reminded him of a battle ship out of action—of something Titanic which is wrapped in incongruous slumber. Though only midday, not a sound rose from the vast collection of shacks and wooden buildings. The mighty ore crushers and distributors were idle, the men lounged listlessly round the two hotels, and the river swirled past unstained by the red of washed metal.

The river? In those two words lay the tragedy—the reason of the inaction that spelled ruin to thousands, including the canvas-coated men who diced and gambled and swore in the saloons. For the river was now a mere meandering stream, and the power that worked the mills was gone, leaving the great plant worse than useless, for it would cost more than it was worth to entrain it to any place where there would be the likelihood of a buyer.

"Looks pleasant, I don't think," Idaho Bart said bitterly as he watched Phil's keen, dark eyes glancing over the drowsy, deserted streets, splashed golden by the afternoon sun. "Two weeks ago yeh would have opined that yeh were back in New York. Busy? I guess we had got the Fountain of Youth faded to a Harlem ash can, when it came to hustling."

"And now the river's gone," the boy rejoined quietly. His remarks were all couched to extract information without giving any in return.

"Say, that's a right hook on the jaw of truth! It's a lead-pipe cinch that this is about the most mysterious thing that ever gave a whole layout brain storm. The river stopped in the night, and we woke up to find this here dribble. The men are going to pike out, if there don't come a change 'fore Saturday."

Phil muttered something to himself.

"Why don't you find out what has dammed the source of the river?" he asked a moment later.

"Say, yeh are a young green-growing thing, all ready canned and labeled!" Bart sniggered. "Do you know that the source of Silver River is up in Black Cañon?"

"What of that?" queried Phil ingenuously.

"Oh, come off! This ain't the season for spring chickens, I reckon. I only know of three men what have been into Black Cañon, and come out alive. Two o' them were engineers belonging to the United States Reclamation Service, and they had the time of their lives. The other was a Indian, and went in to escape the posse that was trailing him for hoss stealing. He said afterwards that he wished he'd stopped and been lynched."

Phil made no reply to these revelations, for they were now in the main thoroughfare of Silver Bridge, and the ore-stained men were lounging up with a tumultuous outcry for the mail. They also bestowed upon the boy the benefit of their rather doubtful wit, but, finding that they got rather better than they sent, soon betook themselves back to the enticements of the saloons, leaving Idaho Bart to take the few official letters up to the office.

"Say, kid, where are yeh going?" he drawled as he strode away with the loping movement peculiar to the riders of the plains.

"To Mr. Allsoner," Phil returned carelessly, keeping pace with him.

He made a clucking sound in his cheek.

"If yeh are after a job, yeh'd better carry your store clothes away along the shining homeward track right now," he said poetically. "Old Allsoner's hoppin' mad, and he'll have yer scalp before yeh could say Teddy."

"I don't want a job," was the irritating reply, and Phil grinned as he noted the other's mystification.

The office of Mr. Allsoner, general manager of Clode's Silver Bridge Reducing Company, Limited, was not an imposing structure. In fact, it might well have been taken for a stack of damaged firewood by the uninitiated, but Phil Clode did not make this mistake. Suddenly shouldering his way ahead of Idaho Bart, he entered the office at a run, and disappeared into the manager's private office—the most sacred spot in the whole townstead—with a coolness that left the two clerks in the outer department absolutely petrified.

Mr. Allsoner, however, was far from being petrified, and he had already used more adjectives than could be found in any dictionary before he looked up, started as though he could scarcely believe the evidence of his senses, and ejaculated:

"Phil Clode!"

"Yes, it's me," was the ungrammatical rejoinder. "Father's got to keep his eye on the market, or we'd go up in a balloon before an hour was through, and there was nobody else to come. Mr. Allsoner, there's treachery afloat."

The keen-eyed business man uttered an exclamation of wonderment, and then, rising, locked the door.

"Spit it out," he said tersely.

"You know our river is stopped."

"I do."

"It's been dammed purposely."

The manager had just seated himself, but he leaped up again at these quietly spoken words.

"Nonsense! The source is in Black Cañon."

He made his rejoinder with an air of finality, as though there was no room left for argument.

"Nevertheless, father overheard a conversation between two Wall Street brokers that convinced him that they have paid some bad man to dam the river for a time. It's a certainty, not guesswork."

Mr. Allsoner stared at him in bewilderment.

"I may be dense, Phil, but I fail to see what good damming our river would do to anybody."

"You are dense," smiled the boy. "Don't you see? Silver Bridge river runs dry. Panic in Wall Street, and two-hundred-dollar shares sold in bucketfuls, and bought by the men who have had the river dammed. Then, after, say, a month, when they've got control of every share in the market, down comes the river again, up go the shares to top notch, and they've netted a cool million."

Silence reigned for a minute, while the manager reviewed this startling idea. Then he murmured "Jove!" in the tone of one seeing visions.

"You couldn't tell me who's working the rig, could you?" he asked facetiously. The realization that the stoppage was only temporary acted like a tonic. "The boys would give him a lively time, if they got their fingers in his wool. It would be a case of the nearest telegraph pole."

"The man mentioned," Phil answered in a cautious whisper, "was nicknamed Red Spider."

"What! By heavens, you are right! Red Spider is an outlaw half-breed, horse stealer, cattle runner, murderer, and everything else abominable. He is known to have a cache up in the hills, too."

"Then catch Red Spider before eleven o'clock to-morrow. At that hour there is a meeting, and the state of affairs here will become public property. The river must be running before then."

"There isn't a man here that will go into the Black Cañon, and I don't blame them," the manager declared hopelessly. "It's certain death."

"What Red Spider can do we must do."

"He's discovered some secret way. Besides, a cross between an Omaha Indian and a Mexican produces something tougher than a white man."

"I start at midnight," said Phil Clode, strolling toward the door.

It was a few minutes after midnight when Phil Clode rode out of the town.

He was alone. As one man the ore workers had jeered at the idea of attempting to penetrate into the famous Black Cañon. They had already been as far as possible, and found the river unstopped. It had failed at its source, they argued. Such things had been heard of before. Mr. Allsoner did not agree with this latter conclusion, but he was entirely convinced that any attempt to enter the cañon would be futile, and he did not scruple to tell Phil so.

The boy, however, although he pretended to accept the manager's decision as final, secretly determined to make an attempt at solving the mystery single-handed. He knew that the failure to resume operations on the morrow would mean ruin to his father, and with the impetuosity of youth he stigmatized the ore workers as a pack of "superstitious grandmothers."

Once out of sight of the camp, he urged his game little steed to a gallop, and set off to where the mountains rose stark and flat against the mauve-colored rim of the horizon, keeping his course by the dried river bed that led the way into the very heart of Black Cañon.

After about an hour's hard riding the track grew even too steep for the broncho, and Phil, tethering the animal to a rock, made his way forward on foot. Gradually the walls of rock rose up and encompassed him, leaving only a strip of sky faintly seen above his head, and the stillness became so unearthly that he paused occasionally to cast a stone down a chasm for the mere pleasure of hearing it rattle.

Arrived at the entrance of the cañon, he halted and surveyed the way for a few minutes. As Allsoner had told him, the river—now a morass of horrible mud—entirely filled the gulch from side to side, rendering progress without a boat an impossibility. The dam controlling the flow, however, was built half a mile farther up, and this was reached by a species of aërial railway, built on the plan of the old overhead switchbacks, with a car slung to a double rope, worked by block and pulley on the return journey.

It was certainly not an inviting mode of progression, but Phil did not falter. Setting his teeth, he grasped the iron ladder that led up to the summit of the first trestle, and mounted steadily. By the time that he reached the top the wind was shrieking in his ears with demoniac fury, and the trestle seemed to sway bodily before the furious gusts, although only a mild and gentle breeze could be felt in the cañon below.

Buttoning his fluttering jacket tightly around him, he stepped nervously on to the flat, swaying car, and fumbled with the two hooks that held it in place, being secured to a couple of iron rings in the top corners.

With a sudden swoop the frail craft left its moorings, and Phil found himself spinning at a dizzy speed through space. Presently the slope became less steep, and as his conveyance slackened speed he was able to look about him.

Not that there was much to be seen, even though the moon rendered it nearly as light as day. Before him the ropes ran on in an everlasting stream, and on each side nothing was visible but the walls of rock, smoothed in places by human handiwork to allow of the passage of the traveling cradle. Occasionally the car would almost stop as it passed with a shock over the platform of one of the trestles, and Phil found that, by clutching the railings at the proper moment, he could arrest it without feeling any particular strain.

He had closed his eyes, and was almost enjoying the rush through the scented night air, when he felt a sudden shudder run through the car, as if it had struck against something. Opening his eyes hastily, he peered round, and then a terrified cry rose to his lips.

The swaying cradle had a new passenger, in the shape of a picturesquely garbed Mexican, who glared upon the boy with fierce wolfish orbs, fiery and bloodshot, as he flourished a long-barreled revolver in his face.

Phil did not need to inquire who the stranger was.

He guessed, and rightly, that it was Red Spider, the outlaw of the plains, who stood before him.

"Carajo!" the man hissed gutturally, thrusting the firearm forward until it snicked the boy's nose. "Whose baby are you? Why are you here? Answer, or over the side you go!"

Leaning forward, he seized Phil's wrist in a vise-like grip, and forced him slowly toward the edge of the car.

"Come to that, who are you?" the boy retorted pluckily. "You've got less right than I have to be here, I guess."

The half-breed's teeth grated with fury at this impertinence.

"I am left here to guard the trestle railway," he yelled, with a curse. "And my duty is to shoot brats who have no business here!"

He pushed the revolver into Phil's face, gradually forcing him nearer and nearer to the edge of the vibrating car.

"You find so many boys trying to steal rides on the trolleys, don't you?" that worthy choked, keeping his wits by a mighty effort of will. He could see that they were rushing rapidly toward the last platform, and, if he managed to cling on till then, he might manage to escape, hopeless as it seemed.

Reaching out as the Red Spider made a vicious lunge, he caught hold of one of the iron crossbars that secured the car to the rope, and held on like grim death. The outlaw, with a shriek of fury, lifted his revolver, and his finger was pressing upon the trigger when the last platform stopped their progress with appalling abruptness. Phil, clinging desperately as he was, narrowly escaped being flung off, and the Mexican, unprepared for the impact, literally hurtled through the air. Over the boy's head he flew, spread-eagled and screaming, and went down—down—down, with the swiftness of a shot bird, and disappeared into the purple mists that veiled the bottom of the cañon from sight. A crash, a single soul-appalling scream, and Red Spider had vanished forever from the sight of men.

Sick at heart, Phil Clode lay for a few minutes without tempting to move. Then he rose cautiously, and, keeping his eyes averted from the dreadful cañon, commenced the descent. Before he had reached the bottom all his natural courage had returned, and he pressed on with renewed energy, inspired by the idea that the outlaw might have left some trail which would lead to his hiding place.

It was black as within a tomb now, for the rocky walls towered up and up higher than the eye could reach.

The track was no more than a smear along the face of the cliff, and Phil began to realize the difficulties that he was to encounter as he proceeded inch by inch, clinging on with teeth and hands, with a thousand-foot drop waiting below. The path, too, grew narrower, and he was just about to relinquish his herculean task in despair when he saw a gleam of light—lantern light—searing the eternal glooms like a streak of fire, and not twenty yards ahead of him as he rounded a sharp bend.

In another minute Red Spider's secret lay revealed.

A square of rock, fitted with powerful hinges, had been opened inward, and the lantern set in the entrance as a guiding light when the outlaw returned. Beyond, the path grew so narrow that it was a human impossibility to scale it; below, until the mysterious catastrophe of its cessation, lay the river, sliding and thundering in cascades and waterfalls, and usually fifty feet or more deep. Phil realized that the passage of Black Cañon was a thing to be dreamed of, and not attempted.

Taking up the lantern, he set off at a brisk pace up the sandy tunnel at the entrance of which it was placed, keeping his eyes open for pitfalls and fissures. The passage led to the right, and perceptibly upward, and ere long he found himself walking parallel with what had once been the river.

After an hour's hard walking he came suddenly into a spacious cave, and found himself gazing once more at the oozing river bed, and at—Red Spider's dam!

Yes, there it was, a great mass of blocks of stone, walling the cañon from side to side, and cunningly diverting the foaming water into a subterranean stream that had been uncovered and channeled for the purpose. Picks and ropes, and blocks of stone, were strewn around in every direction, and just over the mouth of the underground river hung a platform of planking supported by countless ropes, and loaded with a ton or more of cut rock.

Phil was not long in doubt as to its use.

With a little bubbling cry of joy he produced his clasp knife, and went to work busily to hack the ropes in twain.

A score of them were severed, when an ear-splitting crack made him start hastily back. Next instant the whole load of rock fell with a mighty crash, completely blocking the entrance to the subterranean stream that had been draining the life from the river.

Something had to give way, and Red Spider's cunningly constructed dam was directly in the path of the river as it swelled, and rose, and bellied upward. Then, with a roar louder than any thunder, it broke the barrier away, and hurled itself into Black Cañon with irresistible fury, to race and tumble down to where the Silver Bridge Reducing Company's plant was waiting to sully its foaming waters with the red stain of the ore.