Dick saw no chance of obtaining help from that quarter. The ground underfoot was now slippery, and he remembered that they had passed over a place where the earth seemed spongy.
He could only see one hope left. This was for them to seek refuge behind trees, and try to hold the enemy at bay long enough to enable their friends to arrive on the spot. And, since the Indians might rush them despite their threatening guns, this seemed almost like a forlorn hope.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE END OF THE LONG TRAIL
It was just at that critical moment that something wholly unexpected happened. As long as they lived Dick and Roger believed that the Providence that had so long watched over their fortunes, seeing their terrible distress, had come to the rescue.
They heard a sudden sound that bewildered them at first. It was a horrible sucking noise, and both lads actually felt the ground quivering under their feet.
Instinctively they came to a pause, as the yells back of them changed to cries of great fear, some of which seemed to be half-muffled. There was, accompanying these sounds, a strange splashing, and the crash of trees going down.
As the boys whirled around, stunned by all these remarkable sounds, they looked upon one of the most terrifying spectacles that had ever come before them. A large section of the bank of the river, where they had found it so wet in passing, had suddenly let go while the Indians were crossing it, and, together with a number of trees, had slipped into the deep river. Fully half of the Flat Head Indians went with the landslide, together with both of the renegades.
