“If worst comes to worst,” his final words were, “take refuge in some cave. This is a limestone region,—as you may have noticed,—and it’s likely riddled with caves. Keep an eye out for indications of cave mouths. I saw one yesterday, somewhere down there, when I didn’t have time to investigate.”
“All right,” acquiesced the boys, though inwardly scorning the possibility.
Rosa remained at camp to have food ready for the men on their return.
She began by taking stock. There was flour and lard, but no bread. She would have to bake for eleven hungry men. There were rice, beans, onions and tomatoes, dried fruits and coffee, and fresh meat for one meal, and for the next, erbwurst and pickles, macaroni to be baked with cheese, and tea. She hoped—for more reasons than one—that the Ranger would bring more supplies. She got out the Dutch oven and the gallon coffee pot, and with the hatchet provided with the outfit, started getting in a supply of down-wood.
As on the day of the rodeo, she was attired in trim khaki riding breeches and high-heeled moccasin boots,—good on horse-back but mighty hard to walk in, where the ground was rough. Her bobbed curly hair, red silk blouse and fringed sash added a touch of the Rosa that underlay her gritty side. She would surprise Radcliffe with her ability to cook for a fire crew.
The huge loaf safely ensconced in a Dutch oven buried in red coals, she sallied forth on a little exploring expedition. She wished she might find some fir sugar to cap the feast. She had, once, when camping in the Thompson River Valley. She had found the delectable sweet on a Douglas fir. Some of the dry white masses had been all of two inches long, though most of it had been in the form of mere white drops at the tips of the needles. There had also been a quantity of it in a semi-liquid condition on the ground underneath the tree, where some rain had dissolved it from the branches.
Just where should she search? The Indians had told her that time to look on the dry Eastern slopes of the range, in open areas where the trees got lots of sunlight, but where the ground has not dried out too quickly after the spring rains, as moisture is necessary as well as sunlight,—(so long as it does not rain and melt off this excess of the tree’s digested starch). She had a hunch that she could find some on the desert side of the Sierras, that being, of course, unattainable—unless Ace could take her over in his ’plane. It would do no harm to look on this side.
Neither did it do any good. She returned to camp empty-handed save for some cones of the sugar pine, which she proceeded to roast that the nuts might fall out of the spiny masses.
She found the deserted camp over-run with chipmunks. The little striped rascals had ravaged all the food supplies they could nibble into. She watched a couple of them actually shoving on the tin lid that she had left insecurely loose on the syrup can. Finally sending it clattering to the stony ground,—as she watched from behind two trees that grew close together,—the wee things sat up there on the edge of the can, dipping out its contents with their hand-like paws and licking them. Then one tried to reach down and drink it outright, at which he fell in, and Rosa felt impelled to fish him out and launder him,—to his terror,—before turning him loose, then put the syrup on the fire to sterilize.
Meantime what of the fire fighters? Ted and Pedro, with their pick and shovel, had descended rapidly into that deathly silence of the doomed forest slopes, deserted alike by song birds and chipmunks, the hum of insects and sound of any living thing, save alone the never-ceasing roar of the ravenous flames.