“No one knows—at least, I don’t,” Mallison replied. “Very likely a large mass of earth and rocks gets loosened by rain storms, and is held in place by a single key-rock or tree. The pressure back of the rock or tree becomes too great, it breaks or moves, and down comes the thousands of tons of stuff, gathering more material as it travels, like a snowball, until it sweeps everything before it. We’re mighty lucky not to have been in its direct path.”
The boys well knew this. But as the old saying has it, “a miss is as good as a mile,” and when the first terror was over they regained their usual good spirits.
The fire had been put out—swept away, in fact—but it was an easy matter to kindle another, and they had brought with them enough utensils to use in place of the departed coffee pot and frying pan. None of their bedding had been lost.
“So we aren’t so badly off after all,” remarked Jerry, as they sat about the cheerful blaze and ate.
“No, indeed,” agreed Mallison. “But we may have a hard time ahead of us.”
“We’re used to hard times,” chuckled Ned. “It can’t be any harder than some things we’ve been through before this.”
“No,” agreed Jerry thoughtfully, “it can’t.”
It did not take long to establish the simple camp. They got out their rolls of bedding, gathered wood enough to make a sudden blaze in the night in case one should be needed, saw that the horses were securely fastened, and then prepared to get some sleep.
Because of the remote danger that another landslide might follow that first one, it was decided they would take turns in remaining on guard. Thus an alarm could be given by the wakeful one.