Occasionally there was a heavy noise like rolling thunder that echoed from cliff to cliff. The boys thought it very strange that there should be thunder with what was, in effect, a midwinter storm. Also there was no lightning, only the reverberating noise, but they could think of no other cause, and accepted the thunder theory as the only one.
Then the perplexing question was solved in a startling manner. The boys were toiling up the steep side of a ravine, with the slopes above them more nearly perpendicular than where they were. A storm, which appeared to be heavier than any previous one, passed along the mountain, extending beyond the boys, and nearly smothering them in swirling snow.
When the gust had gone by, just as they were able to see once more, there was a roar directly above them. They looked up and saw what appeared to be the whole mountain-side sweeping down upon them.
“It’s an avalanche, Ray!” cried Sidney; “run to one side.”
The boys ran back on the trail to the first angle, then plunged off into the snow, floundering along in frantic haste. They had time, however, to take only a few steps when the great mass of snow was upon them. With it were carried rocks and brush, whatever the torrent had been able to tear from the mountain.
When the boys saw that they could not escape, and were about to be overwhelmed, they seized hold of a small scrub tree that was growing from a cleft in the rock, and hung on for life.
CHAPTER XVI
SNOWED UNDER
When the boys clung to the tree in the direct path of the avalanche, their action was the instinctive effort toward self-preservation, for they did not really hope it would save them. The mass of snow that was advancing upon them appeared to be carrying everything before it, and they fully expected, in the moment they had for thought, to be added to that accumulation of débris.
The great bulk, coming down with such terrifying velocity, reached them and piled over them, but not with the resistless force they were braced to meet. The main body of the avalanche passed with a roar just beyond, and plunged into the cañon below. The boys had paused in the edge of the torrent, where its velocity was slight as compared with that of the center. They crawled out of the snow that covered them and looked at each other with wide eyes.