CHAPTER VIIITHE SNOW-SLIDE
CHAPTER VIII
THE SNOW-SLIDE
“I’m glad they got in a few hours’ sleep this noon,” solicitized Rosa, placing homemade bread and coffee before the Ranger, then dipping up a bowl of soup. She looked fagged to death herself, and Radcliffe made her promise to roll up in a blanket on a browse bed.
“Oh, if only it would rain!” she sighed, “and put out the fire!”
“Sure wish it would!” he agreed. “Haven’t had such a big one in years.”
“The DeHaviland was back with more supplies,” one of the men reported.
“It sure takes tons of grub to keep these firemen stoked,” sighed Rosa drowsily from her blankets. “But they work like lumbermen, and I’d give every last man here a medal if I could.”
Norris and Long Lester skirted the South slope its whole length without finding the cavemouth from which Norris had exited. But by now it was dark, and the task doubly difficult. “If it wasn’t for them boys being most likely just plumb panicky from being lost,” said the old man, “I’d call it sense to camp for the night. Once it’s sun-up, we’ll find the place easy enough.”
But Norris was too uneasy to leave any stone unturned. What might not have happened in the hours since he had last seen his charges! His imagination, given free rein, pictured everything from murder to raving mania.
As they neared the head of the gulch, they could see, on the side of the main ridge that towered above them, patches of snow that gleamed white in the star-light. The canyon here headed sharply to the left.
The side they were on, the short side of the turn, was becoming impassable with rough bowlders and tangling underbrush.
Of a sudden a low rumbling sounded faintly from seemingly beneath their feet. The ground wavered dizzily. Trees swayed, rocks started rolling down the canyon side, and the very bowlder they were on tilted till they had to make a quick leap for it. It was just one of the slightearthquake shocks to which all Californians are accustomed. But never before had either Norris or Long Lester been on such dangerous footing when one happened.
Quick as thought, the old man went leaping up over the bowlders, yelling frantically to Norris to follow him. The geologist knew in a theoretical way what to do when a snow-slide threatened, and with that lightning speed with which our minds work in an emergency he had seen that the shock of the ’quake would precipitate snow-slides, and that they were directly in the path of one.
He knew theoretically,—as the old prospector knew from observation of several tragedies,—that the river of snow and rock-slide would flood down canyon till it came to a turn, then hurtle off in fine spray—on the side of the curve! (It all happened in an instant.) Their one salvation lay in taking theshortside of the curve,—though the going was rougher.
With the roar of an express train,—whose speed it emulated,—the oncoming slide tore down at them. Down 3,000 feet of canyon the crusted snows of what was still spring at thataltitude rushed like a river at flood. The wind of its coming swayed tall trees.
The two men escaped by the skin of their teeth!
“It shore would’a scrambled us up somethin’ turrible!” the old man kept exclaiming.
Next day, he knew, they would find a clean swath cut down the mountain-side,—tall pines swept away, root and branch. He had seen many of these scars, which in later years had become a garden of fire-weed and wild onion, a paradise for birds and squirrels and onion loving bears.
He had seen steep mountains fairly striped by the paths of slides, the forest still growing between stripes. For the steeper the slope, the swifter the slide, as might be expected.
Lucky for them this had been a Southwest slope; for on the North, away from the sun, a slide is even swifter!
He had seen one man buried by crossing the head of a slide which gave way under his foot. Its roar had been heard for miles. Frost-cracked from the solid granite, the side rock that accompanied it had been weathered fromthe peak. Thus are high mountains worn away.
For perhaps an hour after the near-catastrophe, the air was filled with blinding snow,—not that from the skies, but that of the snow dust raised by the slide.
The circle of the rising moon threw a silver glamor over the scene. “What do you figure makes these ’quakes, anyway?” asked Long Lester.
“The boys have asked that too, and I can’t give it to you all in a breath. But I’ll give you the story before we end this trip.”
At the moment of the earthquake, Ace and Ted, immured on a lower level of the cave, were following a subterranean river. They got well splashed by the waves set up, and worse scared, but it was all over in a minute and they were only a degree more uncomfortably damp than they had been before. Suddenly Ted gave an exclamation. A crag of drip-rock had been shaken from the roof, and there, imbedded in the limestone, lay the plain foot-print of—it might have been a giant!
The boys stared, marveling a moment, then Ted voiced his guess. The fossil of some giantof prehistoric ages! “A fossil, all right,” Ace agreed. “But that isn’t a human footprint, even if there had been men that size. That was made by some animal! If we ever get out of here, let’s bring Norris and come back with picks and find out.”
“Then I can quarry this fossil out and sell it?” ventured Ted.
“Right-o!” with a congratulatory slap that made Ted wince.
But the inky stream had once more become placid, and skirting the muddy ledge alongside, they threaded their way through arches of varying height till finally the roof was so low that they had to go on hands and knees. Then the bank became so narrow that Ace slipped off into the unknown depths. To his surprise, his feet touched bottom. Moreover, the water was not so cold as he had imagined. (It was about the same temperature as the air).
“Come on in, the water’s fine!” he encouraged Ted. “Do you know, we could swim this if we had to, and don’t you think it must lead out?”
“Stands to reason. But how about our candles?”
“Hold ’em in your teeth. Haven’t you ever seen any one smoke a cigarette when he was in swimming? It’s a stunt, but––”
“Ever tried it?”
“Sure. Have you?”
“No.” And the deepening water soon proved that he could not keep his candle going. But Ace managed it for a few strokes. Then they had to swim in darkness. An increasing roar told them that they were nearing white water, possibly the outlet, and just as the current from a branch stream would have caught them, they felt an overhanging ledge and scrambled up on it, Ace lending a hand to his less proficient chum.
From the far end of the tunnel shone a faint glow, as through a sheet of water! They had reached a cave mouth.
Creeping cautiously along the ledge, they approached the light. From its pallor and from the roaring of the rapids they at first thought they were behind a waterfall. But a closer approach showed them that it shone through leaves of plants that grew just outside, where they over-arched the escaping stream (gooseberries, they later found, and other vinesthat completely hid the exit of the stream).
It was a ticklish proposition getting out along the rock ledge, which narrowed to a mere rough crack into which they could dig the sides of their soles. But by holding hands and clinging with all their might, while they propitiated the law of gravity by leaning their weight against the wall, they slowly scaled a way above the churning stream, and so to where they could cling to the thorny bushes.
It was night. The light had been the moon shining straight into the cave mouth. But where they were, on what side of the ridge, they could not tell.
They were safe, though! Saved from the blind horror of being lost in the cave! But wet and chilled to the marrow now in the night wind that blew down canyon, famished, footsore, and aching for sleep. Still how wonderfully fresh and perfumed everything smelled after the cave.
“Got any matches in your waterproof match box?” asked Ted with chattering teeth, throwing himself flat on the up side of a rock that would keep him from rolling. “Why, this is funny!” for there was no sign of the streama few yards beyond the cave mouth. They were at the head of some former rock slide, and the stream simply disappeared, percolating underneath it to its destination, (wherever that might be).
But an exclamation from Ace caused him to look in the direction of his pointing arm. In the canyon below them a bon-fire burst into bloom. “The folks?” cried Ace joyously.
“Maybe the Mexicans,” Ted restrained him.
“Let’s slip up on them and find out,” urged the other. “Thunder! Wouldn’t it be great if it was our bunch?”
“All the same, we gotta act just as if it was the Mexicans, till we know for sure.”
“They’ve sure got a good fire,” Ace shivered. “Let’s hurry.”
“All right, maybe it’s Radcliffe come clear through the cave on a higher level, and maybe he’s got the Mexicans.”
“And Pedro?”
“And Pedro!”
“Sure, who else could it be?” they cheered each other.
But it was neither.