“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.