"I don't know—yet," responded Betty honestly. "I guess we've got to talk it over and decide what it is best to do."
Amy groaned.
"Meanwhile we smother," she said.
"Nonsense," retorted Betty briskly. "There's enough air in this place to keep us alive for twenty-four hours at least."
"Twenty-four hours," protested Amy, the panic she had felt at the first threatening to overwhelm her again. "But, Betty, there isn't a chance in the world that anybody will come along here in the next twenty-four hours."
"That's right, too," agreed Mollie, a prickly sensation of pure fright tickling the roots of her hair. "Dan Higgins said this trail was practically never used because of the danger from the mountain. This is a pretty pickle, this is!"
"And even if anybody should come along," Grace pointed out gloomily, "they couldn't be expected to guess that there are four girls and four horses buried in this hole in the wall."
"And I don't believe we could ever in the world make ourselves heard through that mass of rocks and dirt," added Mollie. "Looks as though we had just about come to the end of our rope, I should say."
Amy began to cry again softly, and Betty, who had been listening with increasing irritation to this conversation, burst forth indignantly:
"Of all the silly things I ever heard!" she denounced them hotly, "I think you girls are the worst. You seem to forget that you are Outdoor Girls and that we have been in a good many tight places that were almost as bad as this. Why, we can't expect to have good times and adventures without once in a while getting the worst of it. If this is the way you are going to take a little bad luck," she finished her tirade in a fury that whipped the girls like a lash, "then I'm through, that's all. I refuse to be one of four Outdoor Girls that don't deserve the name."