“You bet!” Rawley promised, his heart curiously light. Angry or pleased, Nevada was very close. In another minute or two he would see her. There would be plenty to talk about, besides themselves. Just to hear her voice, he thought exultantly, would be a panacea for his loneliness.
As he neared the place he stopped as though some one had thrust him back. Then he went on, running as he had not run from the small flood in the river. The shacks stood, unharmed save for gaping window sashes, splinters of glass sticking like flattened icicles to the edges. The porch of Nevada’s rock-faced dugout cabin stood upright, though slightly twisted. But behind the porch the rockwork was tumbled in a confused heap.
At a certain place in the ruins, Anita was whimpering and tearing at the rock with her fingers. Two of the older children were trying to help. It was the sight of these which filled Rawley with a cold fear. They would not tear at the wreck of an empty cabin.
Anita turned and stared at him dully. Then she pointed, her hand shaking as if she were stricken with palsy.
“In there—Nevada,” she quavered. “My girl die, mebby! Lil time ago, speak to me. Now don’t speak no more. Mebby die.”
“Get back, out of the way.” Rawley went up, looked at the place where they had been digging, and caught his breath.
“A little more, and you’d have had the whole thing in on top of her. Don’t you see that wall just ready to topple? Kid, go get a pick and shovel. I’ll try the roof.”
He recalled the construction of the place, thanking God that he had spent many days there. The rock cabin had been set back into the hill, against a rock ledge of the prevailing granite. That, he felt sure, would hold against anything but a direct charge of explosives. In the far corner a dark, closet-like recess had been cut, and roofed with poles, corrugated iron and the dirt. It was used, he remembered, as a storeroom. It had never been finished like the two rooms in front. The rock walls were bare, the poles and iron showed in the low roof.
With pick and shovel he began digging at the roof, which had remained intact. As he worked he cursed Peter’s thoroughness in constructing the place. The poles were set rather close together, and they were spiked down to heavy beams. The oldest boy brought a pinch-bar for that, and Rawley, throwing back the iron roofing, pried up a pole and let himself down into blackness.
The heavy curtain that hung in the doorway of the storeroom was slit. Beyond, the room seemed at his first dismayed glance to be completely filled with rock and débris. Then, quite close, he saw her.