The lightning struck now here, now there, among the peaks, attracted by veins of mineral.
Uneasy on account of the flying stones and falling tree trunks, Pedro was about to take shelter by crawling under a shelving rock when the rock itself was dislodged by a flash of lightning, and went pommeling to the slide-rock on the slope below.
Seemingly all in the same breath, the rock-slide started, with a roar as of fifty express trains, as it seemed to Pedro’s long-suffering ears. An electric storm always does start snow and rock slides.
As if that had been the grand climax, the storm ceased almost as suddenly as it had begun. By his watch it had not been an hour, but from the amount of damage done to both the geography and Pedro’s feelings, it might have been a year, or a century.
“But here we are, safe still,” he told himself in surprise. “After this experience, I don’t believe there is anything worse anywhere to look forward to. So what’s the use of worrying about anything any more? Ever!”—The experience had been worth while. Just how he was to make his way back to camp was another question.
Loosened rocks and bowlders began bounding down the cliffs.
With the mountainside a choice between slippery, dripping rock slopes and sliding mud, fallen tree trunks and soggy forest floor, it was no mean test he had to meet. But as the irrepressible California sun once more burst forth in golden glory, the clean-washed air was all balsamic fragrance, every leaf and fir needle held at its tip a drop of opal, and the birds,—emerging from the holes in which they had safely hidden, those who survived,—burst into happy gratitude.
As luck would have it, an hour before the storm broke, the two boys had sighted the smoke of a camp-fire hidden away down in the bottom of a gulch, with slide rock to cut off any approach from the main ridge. Flying low, they could actually identify fat Sanchez and his two companions, who had their pack burros with them. It seemed too good to be true! But before they could decide whether to sail down and try to capture them themselves, or to go for Long Lester, the on-coming storm began to set them careening, and they had to fly out of the elements at right angles to the storm’s approach.