A little later Carlos appeared at the opening of the pine woods, his brown face scratched, his breath coming unevenly, with his gun on his square, lean shoulder, and a little bunch of a feathery or furry something tucked under his arm. He did not linger as Jim had; he believed at once that his companions had given him up, and sped on as fast as his weary brown legs could carry him along the path which had brought them to the place of the pine cone hills. Carlos had wandered too far into the woods and had lost his way, but now he hoped to overtake the other adventurers and in some way to make his peace.
When Jack opened her eyes it was nearly dark outside the mine as well as in. She lay quite still, feeling a dull pain in her head and an aching numbness in her body. "Olive! Jean! Ruth!" she called fretfully. "I'm ill. Why don't somebody come to me?" She thought she had wakened in the middle of the night in her bed at Rainbow Lodge. Poor Jack put out her hand to touch Jean, who usually slept with her, and her fingers closed on some loose mud and gravel. She held it for a moment and struggled to sit up, but her head ached harder than ever, and she reached back to find her lost pillow. There was only the earth to touch again, and slowly her consciousness returned. Jack stumbled to her feet and made for the faint light at the tunnel entrance. She took a few uncertain steps and sank down in a little heap on the outside at the foot of one of the hills. Drops of rain were falling, and the wind whistled through the tops of the tallest pine trees and swirled around the crests of the lonely hills. "Jim! Jim! surely you haven't left me!" Jack cried aloud. She was not usually timid or nervous, but the deserted place had alarmed her when she came to it early in the afternoon. Now she was alone in it, and about to face a fierce summer storm. Dulled by the pain in her head and by hunger and thirst, for Jim had carried the food and water bottle away in his pockets, she was uncertain as to how she had come to the mine and whether she would ever be able to keep to the return trail.
Jack's face was white and her expression unusual, while just over her temple there was an ugly bruise, and she did not feel able to think clearly. Once she put her hand to her head and was surprised to find her hair damp with wisps of wet curls streaking her forehead. Then she wondered what had become of her hat. An instant later she knew she had dropped it off her head when she fell inside the mine, but nothing would have induced her to go in again to find it. If Jim came back, perhaps he or Carlos would get it for her. Sometimes she was not certain of whether Jim and Carlos had just gone away for a few minutes or whether she had been waiting for them a great many hours. Then she pictured them back at their tent in the green place by the quiet stream, and wondered what they would do when she did not come.
It began to rain harder and faster in big pelting drops; lumps of hail beat down on Jack's shoulders and unprotected head. She ran to the woods to hide, but the place was so sodden and wet and ghostly in the twilight that she would not enter it. There was nothing to do but to try to find her way back to camp alone. Jack thought her head ached less and her decision a wise one. She did not realize that her friends could return to the old mine for her, but once missing the trail back to them she would be utterly lost in the wilderness. Jack recalled that several miles ahead there was a deep gorge with high walls on either side of it, and that she and Jim and Carlos had followed a path at the side of this ravine for a part of their journey. She would strike out across the open country, feeling sure that its high walls could soon be seen rising like a wall of mist beyond the rain.
Flying along on feet unconscious of fatigue, fighting through the storm and darkness and calling aloud when she had the strength, in about an hour Jack reached the ravine. No actual sight of the trail had guided her, but an instinctive feeling for the right direction. Now she sat down for a few minutes in the shelter of an overhanging rock, hoping the storm would blow over or that Jim would find her. But the thunder crashed on, and the wind in the jagged rocks of the ravine moaned and sighed like lost souls wandering in the walled chambers of the canyons, crying for release. Had she ever been rash enough to say she loved the splendid western storms? Jack asked herself. Yes, even in her terror and loneliness she realized there was something magnificent and awe-inspiring in their sudden fury and abandon, as though nature, yielding to a burst of elemental passion, poured forth her anger on the earth in the sweeping rain and furious charges of electricity.
When half an hour passed, the young girl crept out of her hiding place. Perhaps the storm was less severe; anyhow, she would rather face any fate than remain in the gorge all night. It was now too dark to see anything except the vague outlines of rocks and bunches of low shrubs. For a moment Jack stood still, trying to remember whether she should turn to the right or left, and straining her eyes to catch sight of a familiar object that might help her to decide. Then she moved off in exactly the wrong direction, with each step getting farther and farther away from her friends and shelter.
Trained to a knowledge of animal life in the plains of the great West, Jacqueline knew the call of almost every wild beast that is still native to the uncivilized portions of the western states. After walking for another hour, a sound filled her with horror. It was the low cry of a cougar! A thicket of trees and underbrush bordered one side of her path; on the other, lay the deep hollow of the ravine. And it had just begun to dawn on Jack that she was going in the wrong direction; she had passed by no such dense shrubbery in her morning journey. But this was not the time to turn back, nor must she show hesitation or fear, well knowing that the wild creature behind her would dog the footsteps of a solitary traveler, keeping only a short distance away, like a hungry wolf, and though a coward at heart, spring upon her if she showed weakness or defeat.
Digging her nails in the palms of her hands, Jacqueline crashed on, shouting when she could. A little while before, she had felt ill and deadly tired; now, forgetting both, her old courage revived. In the tragedies of the afternoon, her rifle had been forgotten and left outside the mine, but the big cat back of her would never dare attack her if she kept steadily on, frightening it by loud shouting and trampling.
How far Jack walked that night she never knew. There were times when the cougar kept back of her, then he seemed to be walking along by her side in the shelter of the thicket. Now and then Jack believed he slipped in front of her, crouching in a clump of underbrush, but she never once caught sight of the big furtive cat, though she was always conscious of the presence slinking near her. If it is necessary to prove that the modern American girl still has the nerve and fortitude of her pioneer grandmother, Jacqueline Ralston proved it that night. Not for a moment did she falter in her long march in the darkness.
A few hours before daylight the rain suddenly ceased and the stars came out as though the storm had not interrupted the usual hour of their appearance. Now Jack could rest at last! Having come through the wooded place, her enemy no longer pursued her. There were no more rocks ahead. She had reached the end of the gorge; the country beyond was a well-nigh unbroken plain.