CHAPTER VII.
THE CLOUDBURST.
Our adventurers, after a council of war, decided to press right on. AsCoyote Pete put it:
“We’ve got a plumb duty ter perform and we’ll see the game through, ifit’s agreeable to all present.”
It was, and after Jack had fully recovered, which, aided by his naturalbuoyancy, did not take as long as might have been expected, the startwas made.
“It’s a race for the Trembling Mountain, now,” cried Jack, as he oncemore bestrode brave little Firewater.
“So it is,” cried Walt Phelps.
“And may the best man win,” struck in Ralph rather pointlessly, as Petereminded him.
“There’s only one bunch of best men on this trip,” he said, “andthey’re all with this party.”
It did not take long to leave the dreary volcanic valley behind them,and they soon emerged on a rolling plain covered with plumed grasses ofa rich bluish-green hue, on the further margin of which there hung likedim blue clouds, a range of mountains.
“There is our goal,” cried the professor, with what was for him adramatic gesture. He waved his arm in the direction of the distanthills.
“Yip-yip-y-e-e-e!” exploded the boys, in a regular cowboy yell.
“A race to that hummock yonder!” shouted Jack.
The others needed no urging. After their rough journey among themountains the ponies, too, seemed to enter into the pleasure oftraversing this broad open savannah.
Off they dashed, hoofs a-rattling and dust a-flying. But it wasFirewater’s race from the start. The lithe little pony easily distancedthe others, and Jack, laughing and panting, drew rein at the goal agood ten seconds before the others tore up with quirts and spurs goingfuriously. Jack decided it was a dead heat between Walt and Ralph, andboth declared themselves satisfied.
As the sun dropped lower, and hung like a red ball above the distantmountains, the question of finding a suitable camping place became anurgent one. Finally, however, on reaching the dried-up bed of a river,Coyote Pete decided that they had reached the proper spot.
“What about water?” inquired Walt rather anxiously.
“Plenty of that,” said Pete, sententiously.
They looked about at the dry sand and rocks in the river bed and at thewaving grass on either hand.
“You must have splendid eyesight,” laughed Ralph, “I don’t see a drop,unless it’s in those clouds ’way off there above the mountains.”
“I, too, must confess that I’m puzzled,” put in the professor. “A morearid spot I have rarely seen.”
“Wall, I’ll guarantee that if you dig down a few feet right hyar you’llget all the water you want,” said Coyote Pete calmly.
“Soon proved,” cried Ralph, and aided by Walt he unpacked one of theburros and the two lads selected long-handled shovels.
How the dirt did fly then! Maybe it was an accident, and then againmaybe it wasn’t, when the professor, deeply immersed in a book hecarried in his pocket, found himself the center of a regular gravelstorm. He hastily moved out of the radius of the energetic diggers. Butpresently a loud cry from them announced a discovery.
“Struck oil?” asked Jack.
“Better still,—water!”
Sure enough, from the steep sides of the big holes they had dug, waterwas beginning to ooze. It was brownish in hue, alkaline in taste anddistinctly warm, but still it was water, and men, boys and beasts drankeagerly of it.
But it ran in very slowly, and, as Jack observed, it was a long timebetween drinks.
“Wish some of that rain off in the mountains would strike hereabouts,”observed Walt, as they sat down to supper.
“How do you know it’s raining off there?” asked Ralph belligerently.
“I can see the dark clouds, Mister Smarty, and also, I have observedthe fact that lightning is flashing among them.”
“Hear the thunder, too, I suppose?” asked Ralph sardonically.
“Might if my ears were as big as yours,” parried Walt.
Immediate hostilities were averted by the professor, who said:
“Boys! boys! Let us change the subject.”
“The ears, you mean,” muttered Walt, but he didn’t say it out loud,and the meal passed off merrily after the little passage-at-arms.As it grew dark, they could see the lightning flashes in the fardistance quite distinctly. It had a weird effect, this sudden comingand departure of blue flares on the horizon. Against the radiance theserrated outlines of the mountains stood out as if they had been cutfrom cardboard.
“Going to set a watch to-night?” asked Ralph, as they sat about a fireformed of the tough fibrous roots of the tufted grass, which was reallymore of a shrub.
“Of course,” rejoined Coyote, “we don’t know whether them varmints ofRamon’s is ahead or ahind, but wherever they are, if we don’t watchout, they’ll do us all the mischief they can.”
“Reckon that’s right,” agreed Ralph, “there’s one good thing, though,they can’t very well creep up on us here.”
“No, that’s one advantage of an open camp,” agreed Jack, “on the otherhand, though, we might have a job defending ourselves if attacked.”
More discussion, none of which would be of vital interest to recordhere, followed. But it did not last long. Thoroughly tired out as ouradventurers were, they one by one sought their blankets and the campwas soon wrapped in silence. That is, if the snores of some of themembers of the party be excepted. But Coyote, who was on watch, was notbothered with sensitive nerves, and the noise disturbed him not a whit.
It was about midnight, and time for the plainsman to call Jack andRalph to relieve him on guard, when a most peculiar sound arrested himin the act of crossing to the sleeping lads’ sides.
The noise which had attracted his attention was a most unusual,an almost awe-inspiring one. Coming from no definite quarter, ityet filled the air with an omnipresent rumbling and roaring, notunlike,—so it flashed into Coyote’s mind,—the reverberating rumble ofan express train.
“But they ain’t no night mails crossing this savannah as I ever heardon,” he thought.
“Jumping bob cats!” he fairly howled the next instant.
In two bounds he reached the sleepers’ sides and fairly shouted andshook them into wakefulness.
“What is it, Indians?” cried Jack, springing erect.
“Another bear!” gasped the professor.
“It ain’t neither. It’s worser th’n both!” was Coyote’s alarming, ifoddly expressed, rejoinder.
As he spoke the roaring became louder, closer, more ominous.
Through the darkness they could now see that rushing toward themdown the dry river bed was a mighty line of white. In the veryindefiniteness of its form there was something that gripped themall with a cold chill of alarm, the keener for its very lack ofunderstanding of the nature of the approaching mass. Ralph snatched upa rifle, but Coyote, seizing his arm, checked him in a flash.
“Don’t do that, son. It’s not a mite of good,” he cried, and then thenext instant:—
“Run for your lives, everybody! Thar’s bin a cloudburst in thermountains, and here comes ther gosh darndest flood since Noah’s!”