Groping their way down the short tunnel in darkness that seemed as though it were thick enough to be felt, they reached the main cavern.
“Matches!” said Larry. “Have you any dry ones, Dick—or you, Purdy? Mine are all soaked.”
But both Purdick and Dick found that their pocket match safes had leaked, also.
“No light, then,” Larry said. “That’s mighty bad. But I guess we can feel around and find out what this Noah’s Ark flood has done to us.”
What the flood had done seemed to be an appalling sufficiency. Groping about, they were unable to find any trace of their camping outfit. The cave corridor was stripped bare of everything, as nearly as they could determine: packs, blankets, field-testing outfit, cooking utensils, provisions—all were gone. And to make it complete, the burros were missing.
“They’d go, of course,” said Dick gloomily, after they had groped over every foot of the cave floor and had come together at the entrance. “I suppose they’re drowned, but if they weren’t, they’d be killed in the fall from here to the gulch. Seems to me we’re about at the end of things.”
Little Purdick’s laugh was a mere cackle, but it was no reflection upon the amount of nerve he had left.
“I’m glad you saved your rifle, Dick.” In the excitement of the rush for the mine tunnel, Dick had held on to his gun simply because it hadn’t occurred to him to drop it. “When it’s light enough to see, those fellows will probably come climbing up here to take possession. If you’ll let me handle the gun, I’ll promise you that not all of them will get here with whole skins.”
“I guess I’m with you,” said Dick, with a little shiver. Some way, in spite of all that had happened hitherto, the fight with the mine jumpers had failed to impress any of them as a thing which might suddenly develop into a life-and-death struggle. But now they seemed to be face to face with the last extremity. Without food or fire, with practically nothing left but the clothes they stood in, and Dick’s rifle and belt of cartridges, they were, in effect, at the mercy of the three men who had been dogging them all summer. Even if they had been free to go unmolested, they knew they couldn’t reach the railroad without enduring all the hardships of a long march without food.
While they sat at the cave mouth, waiting for the dawn, it is safe to say that all three of them took the long jump which lies between more or less carefree boyhood and responsible manhood. It was Larry Donovan who said, at the end of a protracted interval of silence: