IN THE CAVE
Luck was with the Outdoor Girls that day--or fate--call it what you
will. In the side of the mountain close to where they were, had been
drilled a hole forming a large, artificial cave--probably the work of
some miner who had abandoned operations almost at the beginning either
from lack of funds or ambition.
Into this hole the girls dashed, driven on by their frightful peril. Amy
was the last to enter, and she had barely urged her nervous little filly
into the opening when, with a terrific rumbling and rattling, the mass
of earth and stones fell, covering the mouth of the cave and leaving
them in such absolute darkness that it seemed as if they must suddenly
have been stricken blind.
"Oh! oh!" moaned Amy, her trembling hand striving vainly to quiet the
frightened animal under her. "We're buried alive, girls, we're buried
alive! We'll never get out of this--never!"
"Please stop that, Amy," Betty's voice came out of the darkness, harsh,
unnatural, like the crack of a whip. "The only danger we're in is the
danger of losing our heads. Whoa, there, Nigger, old boy. Take it easy,
beauty--there's nothing to be frightened about--there--there----" and
she crooned to the big beast soothingly.
Someway, the other girls managed to follow her example, enough at least
to quiet their restless mounts. Grace was sobbing, more from nervousness
than fright, but she managed to say with a catch in her breath, "Stand
still, Nabob--don't be such a s-silly. Isn't your Auntie Grace here with
you?"
But it was Mollie who had the real problem. For while "Old Nick's"
skittishness was more amusing than dangerous in the open, here, in this
small place, with the other horses already difficult to manage, any real
panic on his part would be more than likely to precipitate a real
tragedy.
In the dark, unable to see a foot before their faces, only the power of
their wills to prevent a stampede of their panicky horses which would
mean death to them all and, worst of all, the possibility of smothering
or starving to death in this walled-in cave! This was the appalling
situation which confronted the four Outdoor Girls.
Mollie, her teeth grimly set, her knees dug into Old Nick's sides, was
doing her best to keep him from trying to climb on the back of one of
the other horses.
"Oh, Mollie, make him stop it," cried Amy frantically. "He'll kill poor
Lady. Make him stop!"
"What do you suppose I'm trying to do," gritted Mollie between clenched
teeth. "Do you think I like riding the side of a wall? Get down there,
Old Nick, you wicked beast. Just wait till I get you outside."
Although this threat was uttered sternly, Mollie had never been nearer
to crying in her life. Luckily, a cruel dig of her spurs in the horse's
side brought the big beast to his senses. He dropped to the ground and
stood there, quivering in every muscle and nickering plaintively.
"Good work, Mollie, old girl," cried Betty's voice encouragingly, and
Mollie, wiping a tell-tale drop from the corner of her nose, answered in
a voice that held never a quiver: "I couldn't fail you, Little Captain.
Not at a time like this," and then she felt very brave and heroic.
The horses were quiet, huddled together at the farther end of the cave
as though they found comfort in company, and thus one great danger was
passed. But the girls had still the other and greater one to face.
"We'd better dismount," said Betty's voice, surprisingly calm and
matter-of-fact. It was this ability of Betty Nelson's to keep her nerve
and her head in any difficulty, to see almost at a glance the best thing
to do and the best way to do it, that had led the girls to call her
their Little Captain. And now as they listened to her cool voice,
directing them as always in an emergency, some of her self-control
communicated itself to them and they followed her leadership without
question.
"The horses will stand quietly now, I think," she said, and swung
herself cautiously from Nigger's tall back and felt her way slowly past
the horses, out to the small open space between them and what had once
been the mouth of the cave.
The girls followed her example, the horses making no protest, save to
whinny anxiously and crowd a little closer together.
"Where are you, Betty?" cried Grace plaintively, stubbing her toe on a
stone and emitting an injured "ouch."
"I'm over here," responded Betty reassuringly. "Stretch out your hand
and I'll grab it."
"Oh, for a match, my kingdom for a match!" said Mollie, brushing her
hand across her eyes as though to relieve them of the weight of that
terrific darkness. "Why aren't we men so we could carry 'em in our
pockets--the matches I mean, not the men," she added with a chuckle that
ended in a sob.
"Well, here we are," said Grace, when they had found each other in the
inky blackness. "Now you've got us, Betty, what are you going to do with
us?"
"I don't know--yet," responded Betty honestly. "I guess we've got to
talk it over and decide what it is best to do."
Amy groaned.
"Meanwhile we smother," she said.
"Nonsense," retorted Betty briskly. "There's enough air in this place to
keep us alive for twenty-four hours at least."
"Twenty-four hours," protested Amy, the panic she had felt at the first
threatening to overwhelm her again. "But, Betty, there isn't a chance in
the world that anybody will come along here in the next twenty-four
hours."
"That's right, too," agreed Mollie, a prickly sensation of pure fright
tickling the roots of her hair. "Dan Higgins said this trail was
practically never used because of the danger from the mountain. This is
a pretty pickle, this is!"
"And even if anybody should come along," Grace pointed out gloomily,
"they couldn't be expected to guess that there are four girls and four
horses buried in this hole in the wall."
"And I don't believe we could ever in the world make ourselves heard
through that mass of rocks and dirt," added Mollie. "Looks as though we
had just about come to the end of our rope, I should say."
Amy began to cry again softly, and Betty, who had been listening with
increasing irritation to this conversation, burst forth indignantly:
"Of all the silly things I ever heard!" she denounced them hotly, "I
think you girls are the worst. You seem to forget that you are Outdoor
Girls and that we have been in a good many tight places that were almost
as bad as this. Why, we can't expect to have good times and adventures
without once in a while getting the worst of it. If this is the way you
are going to take a little bad luck," she finished her tirade in a fury
that whipped the girls like a lash, "then I'm through, that's all. I
refuse to be one of four Outdoor Girls that don't deserve the name."
She paused, and the girls were silent for a moment, feeling a little
dazed. The tongue-lashing had been just what they needed, as Betty very
well knew. It made them angry.
"Oh well," said Mollie sullenly, "if you are so much better than the
rest of us, Betty, perhaps you can tell us what to do. I'm sure we would
be just as glad to get out of this as you."
"Then help me think of some way to do it," Betty retorted, more quietly.
"Surely we can't accomplish it by making up our minds ahead of time that
we are doomed."
"Suppose you suggest something, yourself," said Grace resentfully.
"All right," said Betty, whose quick mind had been working busily. "I am
as sure as you girls are that the possibility of rescue from anybody
outside is slight. Of course," she added breathlessly, "when we don't
come home dad and mother would become worried and start a search party."
"They wouldn't miss us before night though," said Grace.
"Exactly," Betty caught her up. "And at night they wouldn't be as apt to
discover the landslide as they would in the daylight. They would
naturally think of the woods first. But the next day, anybody familiar
with the trail would be sure to notice that there had been a landslide
and they would be almost sure to connect it with us----"
"But Betty," wailed Grace, forgetting that a moment before she had been
angry with the Little Captain, "all that is just supposition, and you
know as well as we do that we are likely not to be discovered
until--until----"
"It's too late," finished Mollie. "Why don't you say it? It's the
truth."
"And since it is the truth," Betty took her up briskly, "there is all
the more reason why we should take things in our own hands and work out
our own salvation."
Betty impatiently cut short Amy's discouraged "How?"
"Now listen," she said. "There are plenty of stones in this cave----"
"My toes cry aloud that they know it," interjected Grace, but no one
laughed--they were too intent upon Betty. They were beginning to realize
what she had in mind, and the realization brought a thrill of hope.
"If we could find any sharp enough--stones I mean," Betty went on, "we
might use them as a sort of shovel and try to dig our way out. Of
course," she added, as the girls began to grope eagerly among the dirt
and débris at their feet for stones sharp enough to answer the purpose,
"the mouth of the cave may be choked up too solidly with dirt and
underbrush and things for us to get through. But in that case we'd just
have to think up some other way, that's all."
"I've got a peach," cried Mollie slangily, as her hand struck a big
stone sharp enough to serve her purpose. "I ought to be able to dig my
way through the side of a house with this fellow."
"And here's the very one that got too familiar with my toe," said Grace,
as she picked up another serviceable stone. "I'm going to get even with
it now. I shall make it work as it never worked before."
After much groping and knocking of heads together, Betty and Amy also
armed themselves with imitation shovels, and so the work began.
And it was work indeed. For what seemed hours to the anxious girls they
toiled, digging sometimes with the stones, sometimes in desperation with
their hands until it seemed to them they must have dug their way half
through the mountainside. And still that blank wall of dirt, that
impenetrable darkness, that stubborn barrier between them and the
blessed sunshine. Amy was the first to give way.
She sank back on the dank floor of the cave and buried her face in her
dirt-stained hands.
"We'll never get out of here!" she sobbed. "And I'm st-starving to
d-death!"