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 cave mouth 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 slight
earthquake 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 the _short_ side 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 that altitude 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
mountainside,--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 from
the 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
footprint of--it might have been a giant!
The boys stared, marveling a moment, then Ted voiced his guess. The
fossil of some giant of 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 vines
that 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 stream a
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.