From the far end of the tunnel shone a faint glow, as through a sheet of water! They had reached a cave mouth.
Creeping cautiously along the ledge, they approached the light. From its pallor and from the roaring of the rapids they at first thought they were behind a waterfall. But a closer approach showed them that it shone through leaves of plants that grew just outside, where they over-arched the escaping stream (gooseberries, they later found, and other vines that completely hid the exit of the stream).
It was a ticklish proposition getting out along the rock ledge, which narrowed to a mere rough crack into which they could dig the sides of their soles. But by holding hands and clinging with all their might, while they propitiated the law of gravity by leaning their weight against the wall, they slowly scaled a way above the churning stream, and so to where they could cling to the thorny bushes.
It was night. The light had been the moon shining straight into the cave mouth. But where they were, on what side of the ridge, they could not tell.
They were safe, though! Saved from the blind horror of being lost in the cave! But wet and chilled to the marrow now in the night wind that blew down canyon, famished, footsore, and aching for sleep. Still how wonderfully fresh and perfumed everything smelled after the cave.
“Got any matches in your waterproof match box?” asked Ted with chattering teeth, throwing himself flat on the up side of a rock that would keep him from rolling. “Why, this is funny!” for there was no sign of the stream a few yards beyond the cave mouth. They were at the head of some former rock slide, and the stream simply disappeared, percolating underneath it to its destination, (wherever that might be).
But an exclamation from Ace caused him to look in the direction of his pointing arm. In the canyon below them a bon-fire burst into bloom. “The folks?” cried Ace joyously.
“Maybe the Mexicans,” Ted restrained him.
“Let’s slip up on them and find out,” urged the other. “Thunder! Wouldn’t it be great if it was our bunch?”
“All the same, we gotta act just as if it was the Mexicans, till we know for sure.”