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The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle, a novel by Laura Lee Hope |
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Chapter 11. In The Cave |
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_ CHAPTER XI. IN THE CAVE Luck was with the Outdoor Girls that day--or fate--call it what you will. In the side of the mountain close to where they were, had been drilled a hole forming a large, artificial cave--probably the work of some miner who had abandoned operations almost at the beginning either from lack of funds or ambition. Into this hole the girls dashed, driven on by their frightful peril. Amy was the last to enter, and she had barely urged her nervous little filly into the opening when, with a terrific rumbling and rattling, the mass of earth and stones fell, covering the mouth of the cave and leaving them in such absolute darkness that it seemed as if they must suddenly have been stricken blind. "Oh! oh!" moaned Amy, her trembling hand striving vainly to quiet the frightened animal under her. "We're buried alive, girls, we're buried alive! We'll never get out of this--never!" "Please stop that, Amy," Betty's voice came out of the darkness, harsh, unnatural, like the crack of a whip. "The only danger we're in is the danger of losing our heads. Whoa, there, Nigger, old boy. Take it easy, beauty--there's nothing to be frightened about--there--there----" and she crooned to the big beast soothingly. Someway, the other girls managed to follow her example, enough at least to quiet their restless mounts. Grace was sobbing, more from nervousness than fright, but she managed to say with a catch in her breath, "Stand still, Nabob--don't be such a s-silly. Isn't your Auntie Grace here with you?" But it was Mollie who had the real problem. For while "Old Nick's" skittishness was more amusing than dangerous in the open, here, in this small place, with the other horses already difficult to manage, any real panic on his part would be more than likely to precipitate a real tragedy. In the dark, unable to see a foot before their faces, only the power of their wills to prevent a stampede of their panicky horses which would mean death to them all and, worst of all, the possibility of smothering or starving to death in this walled-in cave! This was the appalling situation which confronted the four Outdoor Girls. Mollie, her teeth grimly set, her knees dug into Old Nick's sides, was doing her best to keep him from trying to climb on the back of one of the other horses. "Oh, Mollie, make him stop it," cried Amy frantically. "He'll kill poor Lady. Make him stop!" "What do you suppose I'm trying to do," gritted Mollie between clenched teeth. "Do you think I like riding the side of a wall? Get down there, Old Nick, you wicked beast. Just wait till I get you outside." Although this threat was uttered sternly, Mollie had never been nearer to crying in her life. Luckily, a cruel dig of her spurs in the horse's side brought the big beast to his senses. He dropped to the ground and stood there, quivering in every muscle and nickering plaintively. "Good work, Mollie, old girl," cried Betty's voice encouragingly, and Mollie, wiping a tell-tale drop from the corner of her nose, answered in a voice that held never a quiver: "I couldn't fail you, Little Captain. Not at a time like this," and then she felt very brave and heroic. The horses were quiet, huddled together at the farther end of the cave as though they found comfort in company, and thus one great danger was passed. But the girls had still the other and greater one to face. "We'd better dismount," said Betty's voice, surprisingly calm and matter-of-fact. It was this ability of Betty Nelson's to keep her nerve and her head in any difficulty, to see almost at a glance the best thing to do and the best way to do it, that had led the girls to call her their Little Captain. And now as they listened to her cool voice, directing them as always in an emergency, some of her self-control communicated itself to them and they followed her leadership without question. "The horses will stand quietly now, I think," she said, and swung herself cautiously from Nigger's tall back and felt her way slowly past the horses, out to the small open space between them and what had once been the mouth of the cave. The girls followed her example, the horses making no protest, save to whinny anxiously and crowd a little closer together. "Where are you, Betty?" cried Grace plaintively, stubbing her toe on a stone and emitting an injured "ouch." "I'm over here," responded Betty reassuringly. "Stretch out your hand and I'll grab it." "Oh, for a match, my kingdom for a match!" said Mollie, brushing her hand across her eyes as though to relieve them of the weight of that terrific darkness. "Why aren't we men so we could carry 'em in our pockets--the matches I mean, not the men," she added with a chuckle that ended in a sob. "Well, here we are," said Grace, when they had found each other in the inky blackness. "Now you've got us, Betty, what are you going to do with us?" "I don't know--yet," responded Betty honestly. "I guess we've got to talk it over and decide what it is best to do." Amy groaned. "Meanwhile we smother," she said. "Nonsense," retorted Betty briskly. "There's enough air in this place to keep us alive for twenty-four hours at least." "Twenty-four hours," protested Amy, the panic she had felt at the first threatening to overwhelm her again. "But, Betty, there isn't a chance in the world that anybody will come along here in the next twenty-four hours." "That's right, too," agreed Mollie, a prickly sensation of pure fright tickling the roots of her hair. "Dan Higgins said this trail was practically never used because of the danger from the mountain. This is a pretty pickle, this is!" "And even if anybody should come along," Grace pointed out gloomily, "they couldn't be expected to guess that there are four girls and four horses buried in this hole in the wall." "And I don't believe we could ever in the world make ourselves heard through that mass of rocks and dirt," added Mollie. "Looks as though we had just about come to the end of our rope, I should say." Amy began to cry again softly, and Betty, who had been listening with increasing irritation to this conversation, burst forth indignantly: "Of all the silly things I ever heard!" she denounced them hotly, "I think you girls are the worst. You seem to forget that you are Outdoor Girls and that we have been in a good many tight places that were almost as bad as this. Why, we can't expect to have good times and adventures without once in a while getting the worst of it. If this is the way you are going to take a little bad luck," she finished her tirade in a fury that whipped the girls like a lash, "then I'm through, that's all. I refuse to be one of four Outdoor Girls that don't deserve the name." She paused, and the girls were silent for a moment, feeling a little dazed. The tongue-lashing had been just what they needed, as Betty very well knew. It made them angry. "Oh well," said Mollie sullenly, "if you are so much better than the rest of us, Betty, perhaps you can tell us what to do. I'm sure we would be just as glad to get out of this as you." "Then help me think of some way to do it," Betty retorted, more quietly. "Surely we can't accomplish it by making up our minds ahead of time that we are doomed." "Suppose you suggest something, yourself," said Grace resentfully. "All right," said Betty, whose quick mind had been working busily. "I am as sure as you girls are that the possibility of rescue from anybody outside is slight. Of course," she added breathlessly, "when we don't come home dad and mother would become worried and start a search party." "They wouldn't miss us before night though," said Grace. "Exactly," Betty caught her up. "And at night they wouldn't be as apt to discover the landslide as they would in the daylight. They would naturally think of the woods first. But the next day, anybody familiar with the trail would be sure to notice that there had been a landslide and they would be almost sure to connect it with us----" "But Betty," wailed Grace, forgetting that a moment before she had been angry with the Little Captain, "all that is just supposition, and you know as well as we do that we are likely not to be discovered until--until----" "It's too late," finished Mollie. "Why don't you say it? It's the truth." "And since it is the truth," Betty took her up briskly, "there is all the more reason why we should take things in our own hands and work out our own salvation." Betty impatiently cut short Amy's discouraged "How?" "Now listen," she said. "There are plenty of stones in this cave----" "My toes cry aloud that they know it," interjected Grace, but no one laughed--they were too intent upon Betty. They were beginning to realize what she had in mind, and the realization brought a thrill of hope. "If we could find any sharp enough--stones I mean," Betty went on, "we might use them as a sort of shovel and try to dig our way out. Of course," she added, as the girls began to grope eagerly among the dirt and debris at their feet for stones sharp enough to answer the purpose, "the mouth of the cave may be choked up too solidly with dirt and underbrush and things for us to get through. But in that case we'd just have to think up some other way, that's all." "I've got a peach," cried Mollie slangily, as her hand struck a big stone sharp enough to serve her purpose. "I ought to be able to dig my way through the side of a house with this fellow." "And here's the very one that got too familiar with my toe," said Grace, as she picked up another serviceable stone. "I'm going to get even with it now. I shall make it work as it never worked before." After much groping and knocking of heads together, Betty and Amy also armed themselves with imitation shovels, and so the work began. And it was work indeed. For what seemed hours to the anxious girls they toiled, digging sometimes with the stones, sometimes in desperation with their hands until it seemed to them they must have dug their way half through the mountainside. And still that blank wall of dirt, that impenetrable darkness, that stubborn barrier between them and the blessed sunshine. Amy was the first to give way. She sank back on the dank floor of the cave and buried her face in her dirt-stained hands. "We'll never get out of here!" she sobbed. "And I'm st-starving to d-death!" _ |
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