But Frank had had previous experience in the cavern. He was thinking of the still figure he had found lying there, and of the dark stains on the floor.
“If we could find a boat,” he said, without mentioning his real reason for objecting to the cave, “we might get along very well on the lake. We don’t know what stifling air we shall find in the cave, and, besides, the men we have just had a fracas with may return at any time. It wouldn’t be nice to be locked up in that hole in the ground.”
The wind was dying down to a steady breeze, and the fires seemed to burn lower. The clouds above were dark and threatening, save where gilded by the reflection from below, and seemed to be massing. Frank held up a hand and shouted.
“Rain!” he cried. “Rain!”
It was no gentle spring shower that opened upon the earth then. The fountains of the great deep seemed to have opened wide. The water fell in sheets, and in an instant the boys were wet to the skin.
“Better than fire!” Jack suggested.
The rain pelted down upon the forest fires viciously, and the hissing protests of the angry embers rose in the air. Through the thick veil of the rain clouds of steam could be seen rolling over the lake and along the threatened incline. In ten minutes water was pouring down the steep hill in sheets and the fires were leaping no more.
Pleased as the boys were at the opportune arrival of the rain-bearing clouds, they could not help wondering if the freak of chance which had preserved the forests of northern Montana had not brought Ned and Jimmie sudden death.
“They never can handle the machine in such an air-ocean,” Jack declared, but the more optimistic Pat asserted that Ned must have been a mile above the rain clouds before a drop of water fell.
“I guess the fire brought this rain on,” Frank said, wiggling about in his wet garments, “but it’s just as wet as if brought about by some other means. What are we going to do now?”