“Then what are we to do!” pleaded Emma. “I’m so hungry, so thirsty and so weary.”
“I have been thinking of that, and looking over the landscape at the same time. It seems to me that the second canyon over there should lead us somewhere near our camp. Look to your right and you will observe that the second canyon appears to merge into the one immediately in our foreground, so we will try to get down the mountain and work our way toward the point of intersection.
“We shall find water to drink in the canyon, and we must watch sharply for berries, of which I saw many when out picnicking. Other than a few berries, we cannot hope to get much of anything to eat until we reach camp.”
Emma groaned. They then began a cautious descent of the mountain, creeping from rock to rock, slipping and sliding, now and then at the imminent peril of being dashed to death on the rocks far below them.
“Here is a bush of mountain berries. Come and get them, but be careful not to fall,” Grace called to her companion.
Emma, upon reaching the bush, threw herself down beside it and ate ravenously, then suddenly realizing that her companion had not had a taste of the berries, she shamefacedly begged Grace’s pardon for her greediness.
The bottom of the canyon was in deep shadow when the girls finally reached it, though it was still daylight on the mountain top. A rippling stream of water at their feet, for the moment, put all other thoughts out of the minds of Grace Harlowe and Emma Dean, and they drank and choked until they could drink no more, and, after bathing their faces in the cold mountain stream, they arose from the brook greatly refreshed.
“That was almost as good as a meal,” declared Grace. “It will have to answer for my meal, because I failed to find more berries.”
Emma made no reply to this, but she thought volumes of uncomplimentary things about herself.
Now that the chill night air was settling over the mountains, the wound in Grace’s scalp began to stiffen and give her considerable pain, but she kept her suffering to herself, and, taking Emma by the hand, began trudging down the canyon, that already was in impenetrable darkness. They stumbled on for hours, until finally Emma gave out entirely.