Neither boy cried out. The accident had happened so suddenly there wasn’t time. Sandy started to protect his head from flying hunks of granite, but before he could lift his arms, he felt his body break through the curtain of tumbling rock. The next instant his feet hit solid ground and he was thrown over on his side.
For a moment Sandy lay in semi-darkness, dazed by his fall. The thundering roar of the avalanche was passing somewhere over his head. Then he remembered Mike. “Mike—you all right?” he called, almost afraid to ask the question.
It seemed hours before he heard an answering gasp. “Yes. Wind knocked out ... me.”
Sandy pulled himself over beside Mike. A swirling cloud of dust cut down visibility to a few inches. Just as he reached over to touch Mike’s arm, there was a sigh and Mike struggled to sit up. “I’m okay now, thanks,” he said. “I just couldn’t catch my breath.” He looked around wonderingly. “What happened?”
They were sitting in what looked like the entrance to a large cave that sloped back down into the mountain at a steep slant. A jagged pile of loose stones nearly—but not quite—blocked the mouth.
“How did we get here?” Mike asked in an awed voice. The dust had settled and they were sitting in a tomblike silence. Occasionally a single stone clattered noisily down the slope outside.
“I’ll tell you in a minute.” Sandy crawled over the rocks and stuck his head out through the opening.
“What do you see?” Mike called.
“We got caught in an avalanche, all right,” Sandy said. “Half the mountain seems to be down there below us.”
“I still don’t see how we ended up in here.”