Only a strong man in the hour of his best strength could have done it. With a defiant snort Herb charged through the choking dust-clouds, pelted by flying pebbles, sods, and fragments of sticks.
“This way, boys!” he roared, after five straining, staggering minutes, as he caught a glimpse of his comrades ahead, tearing off to the right, as he had bidden them. “You may let up now. We’re safe enough.”
They faced back, and saw him make a few reeling, descending steps, then lay what now seemed to be an out-and-out lifeless man on a bed of moss beneath a dwarfed spruce.
The nerves of the three were in a jumping condition, their brains felt befuddled, and their hearts sinking and melting in the midst of their bones, from the astounding shock and terror of the land-slide. But, as they beheld the guide deposit his burden, with its helplessly trailing head and limbs, a cheer in unsteady tones rang above the slackening rattle of earth and stones, and the far-away boom of the granite-block as it buried itself in the forest beneath.
“Hurrah! for you, Herb, old boy,” yelled Cyrus triumphantly. “That was the grittiest thing I ever saw done’ Hurrah! Hurrah! Hoo-ray!”
The English boys, open-throated, swelled the peal.
But their cheering broke off as they came near, and saw the mask-like face over which Herb bent.
“Is he gone, poor fellow?” asked Garst. “What do you suppose caused it—the slide?”
“Why, it was a thundering big lump of granite from the top o’ the mountain,” answered Herb, replying to the second question. “That plaguy heavy rain must ha’ loosened the earth around it the clay and bushes that kep’ it in place. So it got kind o’ top-heavy, and came slumping and pitching down, slow at first, and then a’most as quick as a cannon-ball, bringing all that pile along with it. I’ve seen the like before; but, sho! I never came so near being buried by it.”
He pointed as he spoke to the late camping-ground, with its lodgment of clay, sods, pygmy trees, and pieces of rock, big and little.