CHAPTER XI
IN THE CAVE
Luck was with the Outdoor Girls that day--or fate--call it what youwill. In the side of the mountain close to where they were, had beendrilled a hole forming a large, artificial cave--probably the work ofsome miner who had abandoned operations almost at the beginning eitherfrom lack of funds or ambition.
Into this hole the girls dashed, driven on by their frightful peril. Amywas the last to enter, and she had barely urged her nervous little fillyinto the opening when, with a terrific rumbling and rattling, the massof earth and stones fell, covering the mouth of the cave and leavingthem in such absolute darkness that it seemed as if they must suddenlyhave been stricken blind.
"Oh! oh!" moaned Amy, her trembling hand striving vainly to quiet thefrightened animal under her. "We're buried alive, girls, we're buriedalive! 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 thedanger of losing our heads. Whoa, there, Nigger, old boy. Take it easy,beauty--there's nothing to be frightened about--there--there----" andshe crooned to the big beast soothingly.
Someway, the other girls managed to follow her example, enough at leastto quiet their restless mounts. Grace was sobbing, more from nervousnessthan fright, but she managed to say with a catch in her breath, "Standstill, Nabob--don't be such a s-silly. Isn't your Auntie Grace here withyou?"
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 thissmall place, with the other horses already difficult to manage, any realpanic on his part would be more than likely to precipitate a realtragedy.
In the dark, unable to see a foot before their faces, only the power oftheir wills to prevent a stampede of their panicky horses which wouldmean death to them all and, worst of all, the possibility of smotheringor starving to death in this walled-in cave! This was the appallingsituation which confronted the four Outdoor Girls.
Mollie, her teeth grimly set, her knees dug into Old Nick's sides, wasdoing her best to keep him from trying to climb on the back of one ofthe other horses.
"Oh, Mollie, make him stop it," cried Amy frantically. "He'll kill poorLady. Make him stop!"
"What do you suppose I'm trying to do," gritted Mollie between clenchedteeth. "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 nearerto crying in her life. Luckily, a cruel dig of her spurs in the horse'sside brought the big beast to his senses. He dropped to the ground andstood there, quivering in every muscle and nickering plaintively.
"Good work, Mollie, old girl," cried Betty's voice encouragingly, andMollie, wiping a tell-tale drop from the corner of her nose, answered ina 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 caveas though they found comfort in company, and thus one great danger waspassed. But the girls had still the other and greater one to face.
"We'd better dismount," said Betty's voice, surprisingly calm andmatter-of-fact. It was this ability of Betty Nelson's to keep her nerveand her head in any difficulty, to see almost at a glance the best thingto do and the best way to do it, that had led the girls to call hertheir Little Captain. And now as they listened to her cool voice,directing them as always in an emergency, some of her self-controlcommunicated itself to them and they followed her leadership withoutquestion.
"The horses will stand quietly now, I think," she said, and swungherself cautiously from Nigger's tall back and felt her way slowly pastthe horses, out to the small open space between them and what had oncebeen the mouth of the cave.
The girls followed her example, the horses making no protest, save towhinny anxiously and crowd a little closer together.
"Where are you, Betty?" cried Grace plaintively, stubbing her toe on astone and emitting an injured "ouch."
"I'm over here," responded Betty reassuringly. "Stretch out your handand I'll grab it."
"Oh, for a match, my kingdom for a match!" said Mollie, brushing herhand across her eyes as though to relieve them of the weight of thatterrific darkness. "Why aren't we men so we could carry 'em in ourpockets--the matches I mean, not the men," she added with a chuckle thatended in a sob.
"Well, here we are," said Grace, when they had found each other in theinky blackness. "Now you've got us, Betty, what are you going to do withus?"
"I don't know--yet," responded Betty honestly. "I guess we've got totalk 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 tokeep us alive for twenty-four hours at least."
"Twenty-four hours," protested Amy, the panic she had felt at the firstthreatening to overwhelm her again. "But, Betty, there isn't a chance inthe world that anybody will come along here in the next twenty-fourhours."
"That's right, too," agreed Mollie, a prickly sensation of pure frighttickling the roots of her hair. "Dan Higgins said this trail waspractically never used because of the danger from the mountain. This isa 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 fourhorses buried in this hole in the wall."
"And I don't believe we could ever in the world make ourselves heardthrough that mass of rocks and dirt," added Mollie. "Looks as though wehad just about come to the end of our rope, I should say."
Amy began to cry again softly, and Betty, who had been listening withincreasing irritation to this conversation, burst forth indignantly:
"Of all the silly things I ever heard!" she denounced them hotly, "Ithink you girls are the worst. You seem to forget that you are OutdoorGirls and that we have been in a good many tight places that were almostas bad as this. Why, we can't expect to have good times and adventureswithout once in a while getting the worst of it. If this is the way youare going to take a little bad luck," she finished her tirade in a furythat whipped the girls like a lash, "then I'm through, that's all. Irefuse 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 littledazed. The tongue-lashing had been just what they needed, as Betty verywell knew. It made them angry.
"Oh well," said Mollie sullenly, "if you are so much better than therest of us, Betty, perhaps you can tell us what to do. I'm sure we wouldbe 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 thatwe are doomed."
"Suppose you suggest something, yourself," said Grace resentfully.
"All right," said Betty, whose quick mind had been working busily. "I amas sure as you girls are that the possibility of rescue from anybodyoutside is slight. Of course," she added breathlessly, "when we don'tcome 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 todiscover the landslide as they would in the daylight. They wouldnaturally think of the woods first. But the next day, anybody familiarwith the trail would be sure to notice that there had been a landslideand they would be almost sure to connect it with us----"
"But Betty," wailed Grace, forgetting that a moment before she had beenangry with the Little Captain, "all that is just supposition, and youknow as well as we do that we are likely not to be discovereduntil--until----"
"It's too late," finished Mollie. "Why don't you say it? It's thetruth."
"And since it is the truth," Betty took her up
briskly, "there is allthe more reason why we should take things in our own hands and work outour 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 onelaughed--they were too intent upon Betty. They were beginning to realizewhat 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, "wemight use them as a sort of shovel and try to dig our way out. Ofcourse," she added, as the girls began to grope eagerly among the dirtand 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 andunderbrush and things for us to get through. But in that case we'd justhave to think up some other way, that's all."
"I've got a peach," cried Mollie slangily, as her hand struck a bigstone sharp enough to serve her purpose. "I ought to be able to dig myway 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 withit now. I shall make it work as it never worked before."
After much groping and knocking of heads together, Betty and Amy alsoarmed themselves with imitation shovels, and so the work began.
And it was work indeed. For what seemed hours to the anxious girls theytoiled, digging sometimes with the stones, sometimes in desperation withtheir hands until it seemed to them they must have dug their way halfthrough the mountainside. And still that blank wall of dirt, thatimpenetrable darkness, that stubborn barrier between them and theblessed sunshine. Amy was the first to give way.
She sank back on the dank floor of the cave and buried her face in herdirt-stained hands.
"We'll never get out of here!" she sobbed. "And I'm st-starving tod-death!"