The fire drowsed to a bed of red coals and the old man’s chin was sunk in his whiskers, but still he talked on, almost as if in his sleep, and still the boys propped their eyes open while they stowed away in their memories pictures of the pony express riders, of the horse thieves branded—in this land of horseback distances—by having their ears cut off, and of the unshaven miners, sashes bound Mexican fashion around the tops of their pantaloons, the bottoms thrust into their boots, slouch hats shading their unshaven faces, as they panned the glittering sediments or built their sluices, with rocks for retaining the heavy particles of gold washed over them.
Gold had been found in a belt 500 miles long by 50 wide,—and it was a cherished myth that somewhere along the crest of the range lay a mother lode.
But that, Norris told them, was not the way of the precious metal. The “mother lode” was a myth.
The next day the two boys started once again to look for the incendiaries, for when Ace set out to do a thing, it was do or die.
Pedro had now overcome his fear for bears, Mexicans, and getting lost, but the too-gently reared youth had never conquered his nervousness at thunder storms. He meant to, though, for he had come to consider useless fears as so much surplus luggage. Just as when he was a small boy he had overcome his fear of the dark by going right out into it and wandering around in it till he felt at home in it, so now he meant to go right out into the next thunder storm that came, becoming its familiar, till he knew the worst, and no longer felt this unreasoning fear.
It was therefore with a certain satisfaction, (though coupled with an equally certain inward shrinking), that as he scanned the skies for some sign of the returning bi-plane, he noticed, rising above a green fringe of silver firs across the canyon, the snowy cumulus of a cloud. This was about an hour before meridian, the time the usual five minute daily noon thunder storm began to gather.
But to-day he noted with surprise, not unmixed with alarm, that beyond this one small mountain of the upper air,—so like the glacier-polished granite slopes beneath that it might have been a fairy mountain, swelling visibly as it rose higher and higher above the canyon wall,—beyond this for as far as he could see were other domes and up-boiling vapor mountains. What did it betoken? A cloud-burst?—For Sierra weather is not like that in the Eastern mountain ranges, and such an assemblage sweeping along the slopes and flying just above the green firs of the lower forests must mean something beyond ordinary in the line of weather.
Had he known more of Sierra weather, he would that instant have given up his plan of being out in this specimen, but his new-born resolution was still strong within him, and—he did not know. One above another for as far as he could see the pearl-tinted billows rose from among the neighboring peaks, swelling visibly as it rose higher and higher. Then they began floating together, the cloud canyons taking on grayer tints, then deep purplish shadows, and their bases darkened with the weight of their vapory waters.
With the sudden reverberation of a cannon shot, the first thunderbolt crashed just ahead of a blinding zigzag of lightning, and echoing and reëchoing from peak to granite peak, with ear-splitting, metallic clearness, it rang its way down the canyon walls, till the echoes died away. Soon the big drops began spattering loudly on the granite slopes, till the drenched boy, bending his hat-brim to the on-slaught, lost his footing in the new slipperiness of the smooth, sloping rocks, down which a solid sheet of water now raced, dimpling silver to the pelt of each additional drop.
Before he could collect his scattered wits, another thunder peal came cannonading at the mountain mass, and almost behind him a solitary old fir tree shook the ground with its fall. Another fir was slivered into huge splinters that flew—fortunately for Pedro—just too far away to hit him. Then loosened rocks and bowlders began bounding and re-bounding down the cliffs till their thunder seemed as loud as that from the heavens.