"All right now. Mountain him no run down hill here."
It was true Frank had escaped from the track of the landslide and had brought his sweetheart to safety. Behind them the avalanche of earth, and stones, and timber was heaping itself on the tiny plateau and pouring over the brink of the cliff in a cascade that thundered into the valley below. All around the rocky slopes and wooded steeps were roaring back the sounds like monsters awakened from peaceful slumber and enraged at being thus disturbed.
All this had been brought about by the shot fired by Red Ben. That small concussion had started rolling a single pebble that was the keystone. Recent rains had loosened that pebble. Others followed it, and a bit of earth began to slip downward. This dislodged larger stones, and soon the landslide was under way.
It ceased almost as quickly as it began. The grumbling, roaring mountains continued raging for a few moments, and then they, too, became silent. The bright moonlight revealed the change wrought by the landslide, and it told those who had escaped that the mouth of the cave that had been the hiding place of Del Norte and his companions was closed forever by tons of earth, burying the wretches in a living tomb.
Slowly Frank's friends gathered around him. They were all there; all had escaped. Of the entire party Belmont Bland was the only one missing. One remembered having seen Bland running blindly toward the brink of the precipice, apparently having forgotten its existence. No human eye ever beheld him afterward. If he did not rush blindly over the precipice, it is likely he halted on the brink and turned to escape in another direction when it was too late, being swept over by the rushing landslide.
At the foot of that precipice the body of Pat O'Toole was also buried where Frank had left it when he lost no time in climbing the mountain side.
CHAPTER XI.
BURIED ALIVE!
As Frank and his party left the mountain side there remained two men buried alive in the cave whose mouth was closed by the landslide!