Unexplored!

Gold had been found in a belt 500 miles long by 50 wide, – and it was a cherished myth that somewhere along the crest of the range lay a mother lode.

But that, Norris told them, was not the way of the precious metal. The “mother lode” was a myth.

The next day the two boys started once again to look for the incendiaries, for when Ace set out to do a thing, it was do or die.

Pedro had now overcome his fear for bears, Mexicans, and getting lost, but the too-gently reared youth had never conquered his nervousness at thunder storms. He meant to, though, for he had come to consider useless fears as so much surplus luggage. Just as when he was a small boy he had overcome his fear of the dark by going right out into it and wandering around in it till he felt at home in it, so now he meant to go right out into the next thunder storm that came, becoming its familiar, till he knew the worst, and no longer felt this unreasoning fear.

It was therefore with a certain satisfaction, (though coupled with an equally certain inward shrinking), that as he scanned the skies for some sign of the returning bi-plane, he noticed, rising above a green fringe of silver firs across the canyon, the snowy cumulus of a cloud. This was about an hour before meridian, the time the usual five minute daily noon thunder storm began to gather.

But to-day he noted with surprise, not unmixed with alarm, that beyond this one small mountain of the upper air, – so like the glacier-polished granite slopes beneath that it might have been a fairy mountain, swelling visibly as it rose higher and higher above the canyon wall, – beyond this for as far as he could see were other domes and up-boiling vapor mountains. What did it betoken? A cloud-burst? – For Sierra weather is not like that in the Eastern mountain ranges, and such an assemblage sweeping along the slopes and flying just above the green firs of the lower forests must mean something beyond ordinary in the line of weather.

Had he known more of Sierra weather, he would that instant have given up his plan of being out in this specimen, but his new-born resolution was still strong within him, and – he did not know. One above another for as far as he could see the pearl-tinted billows rose from among the neighboring peaks, swelling visibly as it rose higher and higher. Then they began floating together, the cloud canyons taking on grayer tints, then deep purplish shadows, and their bases darkened with the weight of their vapory waters.

With the sudden reverberation of a cannon shot, the first thunderbolt crashed just ahead of a blinding zigzag of lightning, and echoing and reëchoing from peak to granite peak, with ear-splitting, metallic clearness, it rang its way down the canyon walls, till the echoes died away. Soon the big drops began spattering loudly on the granite slopes, till the drenched boy, bending his hat-brim to the on-slaught, lost his footing in the new slipperiness of the smooth, sloping rocks, down which a solid sheet of water now raced, dimpling silver to the pelt of each additional drop.

Before he could collect his scattered wits, another thunder peal came cannonading at the mountain mass, and almost behind him a solitary old fir tree shook the ground with its fall. Another fir was slivered into huge splinters that flew – fortunately for Pedro – just too far away to hit him. Then loosened rocks and bowlders began bounding and re-bounding down the cliffs till their thunder seemed as loud as that from the heavens.

The lightning struck now here, now there, among the peaks, attracted by veins of mineral.

Uneasy on account of the flying stones and falling tree trunks, Pedro was about to take shelter by crawling under a shelving rock when the rock itself was dislodged by a flash of lightning, and went pommeling to the slide-rock on the slope below.

Seemingly all in the same breath, the rock-slide started, with a roar as of fifty express trains, as it seemed to Pedro’s long-suffering ears. An electric storm always does start snow and rock slides.

As if that had been the grand climax, the storm ceased almost as suddenly as it had begun. By his watch it had not been an hour, but from the amount of damage done to both the geography and Pedro’s feelings, it might have been a year, or a century.

“But here we are, safe still,” he told himself in surprise. “After this experience, I don’t believe there is anything worse anywhere to look forward to. So what’s the use of worrying about anything any more? Ever!” – The experience had been worth while. Just how he was to make his way back to camp was another question.

With the mountainside a choice between slippery, dripping rock slopes and sliding mud, fallen tree trunks and soggy forest floor, it was no mean test he had to meet. But as the irrepressible California sun once more burst forth in golden glory, the clean-washed air was all balsamic fragrance, every leaf and fir needle held at its tip a drop of opal, and the birds, – emerging from the holes in which they had safely hidden, those who survived, – burst into happy gratitude.

As luck would have it, an hour before the storm broke, the two boys had sighted the smoke of a camp-fire hidden away down in the bottom of a gulch, with slide rock to cut off any approach from the main ridge. Flying low, they could actually identify fat Sanchez and his two companions, who had their pack burros with them. It seemed too good to be true! But before they could decide whether to sail down and try to capture them themselves, or to go for Long Lester, the on-coming storm began to set them careening, and they had to fly out of the elements at right angles to the storm’s approach.

Returning three hours later with the old ex-deputy sheriff, – it was a spot not to be mistaken, – Ace gazed in complete stupefaction at the gulch where the Mexicans had been encamped. For there was now nothing there but slide-rock!

The dust that still grayed the atmosphere spoke clearly of the catastrophe. And there would not have been one chance in a million of their escaping. That they had not done so, their non-appearance anywhere in the neighborhood bore abundant testimony.

The Mexicans had been captured by those same natural forces they had tampered with when they set the forest fires. The little camping party was free to return as soon as their time was up.