While they were talking, the sky had begun to lighten in the east with the promise of another cloudless summer day. As the stars were extinguished one by one and the growing dawn light crept down into the valleys and gulches, they were able to see what the dam-bursting flood had done. The broad swath mowed down through the forest by the avalanche boulder two days earlier had formed a path for the flood, and the cataracting water had swept it clean of everything movable.
Far down the slope from the cliff’s foot they saw one of the burros grazing peacefully and quite as if nothing had happened to it. But the other was lying on its side in the path of the flood, and the field-glass showed them that it had a broken leg and couldn’t get up.
“Poor old Fishbait!” said Dick mournfully. “If we could only get to him and put him out of his misery!” Then he refocused the glass and searched carefully for some signs of the camp outfit. There was nothing to be seen. “I guess it’s all gone on into the gulch creek and been washed away,” he said.
Purdick got up and stretched himself. The cold soaking, with no chance to dry out, had left him stiff and numb, and he took a turn around in the cave to limber up. When he came back to the crevice mouth, it was to say: “Just thought I’d take a squint around to see if any of the eatables had been overlooked by the flood. They’re all gone; everything’s gone: wood-pile, green-grass hay, and even the pile of ore we had sorted out.”
Larry took up a hole in his belt. “That’s breakfast,” he said, with a sort of grim attempt to make a joke of it. Then: “Let’s get back inside—so as to leave them guessing as long as we can.”
They had hardly withdrawn from the lip of the entrance before one of the three miscreants came in sight. It was the cripple, and he was swinging along toward the lower end of the avalanche path. When he reached it he began poking around in the débris with his crutch.
“Humph!” Larry grunted. “Looking for our dead bodies, I suppose.”
Little Purdick’s pale blue eyes were glowing.
“Shall I try for it?” he whispered. “I believe I could get him, even at this distance.”
“No, no!” Larry cut in hastily. “They’re cold-blooded murderers, all right, but we mustn’t be. When they come after us it will be different.”