“Wal, durn yer hide, I’m that glad to see you I’ve a notion to wallop you,” the old guide welcomed them. “But I’m not a-goin’ to ask you a single word till you’ve et,” and he proceeded to build up a brighter fire. “Peel off them duds, and roll up here in our blankets whilst we dry things for you.”
The bedraggled boys allowed Norris to help them out of their heavy, water-soaked clothing, for their hike down the mountainside in the night wind had fairly stiffened their joints. First Long Lester administered a quart apiece of scalding tea, then insisted that, fagged as they were, they bathe their feet. “A camper is as good as his feet,” and Pedro had yet to be located.
It was decided that, as they were all of them worn out, and Pedro, wherever he was, would likely sleep himself when night came, they would wait till dawn to search for him and the Mexicans. While it was a question as to whether they were still in the cave, it seemed best to search there first.
At the moment of the earthquake, Pedro had been crawling through a narrow passageway, bed of some former watercourse, whose walls dripped black in the glow of his dying torch. Then came a crash before him!—A chunk of rock had fallen from the roof into the passageway. When the alarming swaying motion and the thunder of the bowlder’s fall had subsided, and he had relighted the torch, (which had been extinguished), he found his forward progress effectually blocked. Behind were the Mexicans,—Sanchez possibly still plugging the opening into the passageway. He was a prisoner! He was entombed!
At first, utter panic possessed him. In like situation, those of weak, nervous timbre have been known to go insane. Then he got a grip on himself and reasoned that Norris and the rest would not leave him to his fate. They would never give him up till they had searched the cave thoroughly, and had he not left his bandanna at one turn, his handkerchief at another, and the end of a freshly charred torch at a third? Besides, (he smiled grimly), if his own party did not find him, the Mexicans might. Or if they captured the Mexicans, they would wring from them a confession of his near whereabouts. (This time he laughed outright at thought of Sanchez the Stout still dangling his helpless legs when the Ranger found him. The sound echoed and reëchoed weirdly.)
This experience had done much for Pedro’s untried courage. For after all, is it not the unknown that terrifies us rather than the actual calamity to be faced? Another thing that helped the Spanish boy to be reasonably philosophical,—probably the biggest factor, after all,—was Nature’s medicine, his extreme physical fatigue. Thrusting his hat through a narrow crevice so that it would be seen and recognized by any one coming that way, he stretched himself out flat on his back on a bit of smooth, dry rock, thriftily extinguished the remaining bit of torch, and was instantly asleep.
He awoke, he knew not how much later,—but he felt refreshed,—to hear the sound of voices echoing and reëchoing faintly, far down the passageway. Fumbling frantically for a match, he yelled for help with all the power of his trained voice. (And the sound echoed back and forth.) At first Norris and the boys could not tell from which direction it came. Then Long Lester, who was in advance, saw the hat, and it but remained to remove the bowlder.
Now it was that they had use for their ingenuity, for their combined efforts did not suffice to budge the fallen rock. The cavern in which Pedro had become immured was off a lateral passageway leading,—if he had taken the turn to the right instead of the one to the left,—to the very cave mouth by which the rescue party had reëntered; for Long Lester had found, not far from the waterway through which the two boys had come,—but on a higher level,—some scratches on the rocks and a heel print in the scanty soil that told the old mountaineer as plain as words that that was the way Radcliffe had come. Every heel in the party was different, one having Hungarian hob-nails set in a semi-circle, another a solid design in the same nails, a third the larger hobs, a fourth none. He knew the differences in size and the ones that were worn deeper on the inside of the foot. To him a footprint was as good as a signature, and better, for like an Indian, a “hill billy” can often read how fast you were going from a group of two or three foot-prints, how tired you were, and much besides. This knowledge had served them in good stead. He now hurried back to the cave mouth with Ace, found a down log that would serve as a lever, and they pried away the bowlder that kept Pedro a prisoner.
Sign of the Mexicans they could not find, save that Sanchez had been removed from the crevice of the stalactites, (at least he was no longer there), but whether he had had to fast or not, they could not tell. The Mexicans evidently knew the cave and they had been near the southern end of it. Though Long Lester could find no trace of their footprints at either of the exits they knew, there were doubtless others, and it seemed the wisest course now to look for them outside. For the boys were still unwilling to give up the chase.
Reporting back to Radcliffe, they learned, to their amazement, that the pack burros the Mexicans had left near the northern cave mouth had disappeared, but where, they could not tell from any sign left on the charred ground outside.