_ CHAPTER XIII. A NIGHT IN THE CAVE
"Oh, my little Choko!" sobbed Polly, quickly turning Noddy to go down to the edge of the precipice where the burro had slipped over and down.
"Now we haven't a thing to eat, and no blankets for the night! I knew this was a foolish outing," complained Barbara.
Eleanor failed to hear her sister's selfish remark, for she was driving her burro closely upon Noddy's heels. Anne was so impatient at Barbara that she urged her horse after Eleanor to keep herself busy.
"Good gracious! Am I to sit here alone and freeze! I'm sure I'm not such a fool as to have the same thing happen to me as it did to Choko," cried Barbara, but the wind carried her words back to Grizzly Slide.
Polly slid from her saddle and stretched out flat upon the brink to peer over the edge for a possible sight of the burro. As she did so, she saw a mass of baggage and burro scramble upright and shake itself violently. Then a plaintive whinny rose up to welcome the fearful girls.
"Whoa! Whoa, Choko!" shouted Polly, instantly.
Jumping up, she called to Eleanor: "Choko fell upon a ledge, but there's a great hole behind him and should he back he will surely fall in and be lost. I'm going down to lead him out!"
"Oh, Polly, don't risk your precious life for a burro!" screamed Barbara, hysterically.
"If Noddy can creep down, I'll save Choko without risk to myself," declared Polly, climbing in the saddle.
"If Polly goes, I go too!" exclaimed Eleanor, turning her burro to follow Noddy.
"Don't you dare! Nolla--think of mother grieving for you, and me left alone in Colorado, helpless!" cried Barbara.
"Now I'm going, anyway! I'd like mother to appreciate me," was Eleanor's unexpected reply, but Anne caught an undaunted look in the girl's eyes.
The combined persuasions of Barbara and Anne had no effect on Eleanor, who, truth to tell, exulted in this daring feat and would not have missed the thrill for anything. But her burro balked at the point where Noddy began the descent.
Noddy was making for a place where the ledge met the downward slope of the mountain-side. The burro felt about for sure footing and then took a step forward. Prodding carefully again, she took the next step, and so on. Sometimes, feeling suspiciously, she would essay a step and as suddenly bring back her hoof before breaking into the pit. Thus taking one assured step after another, she finally reached the beginning of the ledge where Choko had landed.
Upon the mountain-side where the frozen girls and beasts trembled, the wind howled and the blizzard swept along between the trunk of trees, but on the ledge Polly found comparative shelter and only now and then a blast of the gale.
She stopped to beckon to Eleanor and then urged Noddy along the foothold cleft from the cliff. Above, the rock-wall rose to the mountain-top; beneath, Polly could not gauge the depth--it was too dreadful and was now blurred by fine drifts from the blizzard.
After what seemed an age, Polly reached Choko, who still stood obedient to his mistress's command of "Whoa." But he shook and seemed completely broken up with fear and the shock of the fall.
"Dear little Choko!" purred Polly, jumping from Noddy's back and softly patting the burro's woolly face.
The burro affectionately nosed Polly, who gazed quickly at what she thought to be a pit back of the little beast. She gasped in wonderment and went to the dark hole. Then she quickly ran back and took hold of Noddy's and Choko's bridles. Standing thus, she shouted to the anxious girls above:
"Come down as carefully as I did and here you will find a cave." With that she disappeared into the yawning black hole, leading both burros. Barbara and Anne stared at each other in amazement, and the latter said: "Come carefully! Anything is better than freezing here."
Eleanor had already reached the ledge, when Polly came forth from the cavern to shout out advices. The two older girls made the perilous descent safely, and then guided their horses along the ledge until all stood before the cave where the burros were waiting.
"Isn't this a miracle?" cried Polly, the moment all were safe and the poor beasts were being led inside the refuge.
The girls laughed and cried hysterically when they saw the haven, but the animals seemed uneasy, and Noddy came up to Polly with fear apparent in her expressive eyes.
"Noddy, are you frightened? Surely no wild beast can be in here, at present?" queried Polly, looking around in the semi-gloom.
"Polly! What can it be?" shrieked Barbara, clinging to Anne in fear.
"Better get out again, Polly," suggested Eleanor, seeing the horses paw the floor, and strain their eyes to see.
"Are we safe here, Polly dear?" asked Anne.
"Safer here than up there," returned Polly, and as she spoke a great tree was flung down over the edge of the gorge just where ledge and slope met.
"Now we can't crawl out if we wanted to--the tree obstructs the way," declared Polly, decidedly.
"But we must see what it is that disturbs the animals," advised Anne.
"I'd rather throw myself over the cliff than be clawed to bits by a panther!" wailed Barbara.
"The horses are quieting down now, and Noddy seems as much at home as anywhere, so I reckon it was only strangeness that made them act queer," said Eleanor.
"But something may pounce out upon us, and take us unawares!" wailed Barbara.
"I propose to smoke them out as soon as I make a fire!" said Polly, looking about in the darkness of the cave for a possible stick of wood, but not finding any.
"I'll have to chop some of that pine! Noddy can carry me safer than I can walk on this ledge, so I want you girls to promise to keep the horses close about you and wait right here until I get back!" said Polly, taking the ax from the pack.
"Polly, I'm coming too! Two axes are better than one, and I can ride my burro, too!" declared Eleanor.
Anne and Polly sent the girl a look of gratitude, while Barbara was speechless until after Eleanor started to go, then she remonstrated volubly.
The two girls crept toward the down-thrown pine, and Eleanor said, "We'll need wood for a fire, won't we?"
"Yes, we will have to remain in the cave all night, and it gets so terribly cold upon these mountain peaks that we will be frozen unless we warm up the interior of the cavern. Then, too, we may need to keep fires going at the back end of the cave as well as in front, to ward off wild beasts!"
They were slowly advancing when another awful crash came from the slope above. Both girls ducked instinctively, but the decayed pine that was broken off above ground fell over the edge of the cliff just in front of them and obstructed the way so that progress was impossible.
Eleanor quaked and cried, "Oh, let's go back, Polly!"
But Polly laughed. "Glory be, our fire-wood came to us halfway."
At her cheerful words, Eleanor braced up again.
Polly jumped from Noddy's back and started to hew at the soft decayed wood. It was easy to chop and would furnish a flaring fire, even though it would burn rapidly and need constant replenishing.
"Nolla, this is the second miracle to-day! Had we hunted the mountain over, no better wood could have been found for just our need. Yonder on that other pine, when this is out of our way, awaits our bedding."
"What funny bedding!"
"Just you wait and see."
When enough wood was chopped to clear a way on the ledge, Polly showed Eleanor how to make bundles of it. These were tied by means of the rope to Noddy's harness and carefully dragged back to the cave. Several trips had to be made before both burros had brought the firewood to the growing pile in the cave.
When Polly spoke of cutting balsam for beds, Anne offered to help, as she was so cold.
"And leave me here alone?" cried Barbara.
"Why don't you come with us?" asked Eleanor.
"I'm dead! I can't do another thing!"
"Then stay here and cheer the burros," said Eleanor.
"I won't let every one of you go and leave me to be killed by a wild animal," shuddered Barbara, looking over her shoulder.
"Nothing wild here, but you, Bob. However, you may light a fire for us, while we are gone," retorted Eleanor, unsympathetically.
Without further comment, Barbara was left, and soon the girls were stripping the spruce which had blown over the ledge. Its green branches would make the softest of wild-wood beds.
"It really was fortunate that both these trees came down when they did! We would have to remove them as obstacles to our going out in the morning, and I would have had to hunt well before I could have found such fine tinder! So I've really saved myself a double chopping!" said Polly, as they tied up the last bundle of evergreen branches and started the burros for the cave.
"I'm just frozen, and I wish you would hurry and build a fire!" cried Barbara, petulantly, when the girls came within hearing.
No one replied, but Eleanor was furious, while the others were impatient with the girl.
"I was so hungry that I tried to get a sandwich out of the pannier, but something made a noise back in the cave, and I'm sure it was a rattle- snake buzzing!" added Barbara, trying to win sympathy from the stony- faced companions.
"Pooh! You've got rattle-snake on the brain! It would have done you good to get out there with us and do some rattling of the ax on the wood!"
"Why, Nolla! How unkind you are since we came to this awful country!" cried Barbara, not able to find a handkerchief, and sniffing audibly.
"Here! Use this to amuse yourself with while
we work!" said Eleanor, taking a neatly folded handkerchief from her coat pocket.
When Eleanor turned again to the others, she found Anne had unharnessed the burros and piled the saddles upon a stone projection near the opening of the cave.
There were numerous little finger-like caves that branched out from the main cave, but they led nowhere and seemed empty. Polly noticed that the dry leaves and loose shale scattered about appeared to have been undisturbed for months. Some of the leaves were from the harvest of the previous fall, so she felt sure no beast had prowled about the "fingers."
Coming to a much larger extension than any of the others had been, Polly called out: "This must be the thumb of the hand!"
"Sure it isn't the arm!" laughed Eleanor.
"Ah, I thought so--now I have it!" murmured Polly, finding a nest of leaves and soft feathers packed down with bits of fur and dry grass.
"What have you found?" eagerly asked three voices.
"The lair of a grizzly. I've got him!" cried Polly, triumphantly.
Instantly, three girls screamed and turned to run, and Polly laughed.
"I've got him on the
outside, girls! He can't get in with that fire smoking his front doorway, you see." "Oh, hurry back and pile more wood on the fire!" cried Eleanor, quaking with fear.
"Yes, yes, Polly! Come away and let's build more fires!" added Barbara, not knowing which one of the girls to hide behind, and looking at the horses as if pondering a refuge with them.
"What! And use all of our 'safety first' before dawn! If you waste the wood now, what will you do when old grizzly comes prowling home and finds your fires dying down?" said Polly.
"Well, do have one of us go and tend the fire carefully so it can't possibly die down and let him in!" added Anne.
"We are almost through exploring, so we may as well finish! Then we will all go and have supper and feed the animals."
The remainder of the cave proved to be a rocky wall gradually sloping down until it reached the entrance again. But, just at one side of the "thumb" was an aperture from which the wind blew in, as could be seen when Polly held her torch down to the opening.
"That leads out somewhere, and that opening is big enough to let a panther creep through, or a wild-cat! I'd like to crawl through there and make sure where it comes out and if it is quite safe on the other side," suggested Polly, looking at the girls.
"Oh, Polly dear! Don't do it! Suppose something should happen to you!" cried Anne.
"Why, I wouldn't let it, Anne! If I creep through that tunnel, I'd shove the torch in first and keep it moving ahead of me all the way, so that nothing could grab me, you see!" said Polly, half laughingly.
"I say, Polly, let well enough alone. Let's go back and get supper and rest for to-morrow!" advised Barbara.
"But just s'posing a rattle-snake was coiled up inside that tunnel! A burro wouldn't smell it, and it could crawl out during the night and take a good straight bite!" teased Eleanor.
Polly laughed, but Barbara thought Eleanor meant it, so she replied: "Then Polly had better go in and see if everything is safe for the night."
Anne had been so rudely shocked that day at the selfishness apparent in Barbara's character, that she did not try to hide her opinion. The wonder was, that she ever could have been so completely taken in during the months in Denver, as to declare Barbara to be a splendid girl when one knew her. She now decided that it took ranch life and mountain exploits to show up genuine characteristics and thoughts.
"Polly, I'll go in first!" offered Eleanor, dropping to her knees to crawl in at the opening.
"Eleanor Maynard! Come back here!" cried Barbara, taking hold of her sister's feet.
"Nolla, you shan't take the glory from me!" laughed Polly.
Meantime Eleanor was pulled back and rolled over, laughing as heartily as if she were at a farce-comedy.
"Now listen to me!" advised Polly, shaking a finger at the three girls. "First of all, Anne and Bob must go and watch the fires, then unpack the panniers, and next make beds of the tips--you know how, Anne?"
"I've watched the school children at Bear Forks weave it, so I'm sure I can make them, too," replied Anne.
"Good! You stick the little stem-ends under the soft fuzz of the others just laid. The principal thing is not to have hard prods hurting the body, and the tips will take care of the springs and softness, all right," said Polly.
"While Anne is making the beds, Bob can fix up odds and ends of spruce and leaves in the 'fingers' for the horses' beds--a bed in each finger, Bob. If the animals are comfortably bedded down they will be fresh in the morning. And if we hide them in those fingers the scent will not be so apt to reach a grizzly or lion should any prowl about to-night."
"Where shall I place the spruce beds for us?" asked Anne.
"Fix up two on each side of the cave as near the entrance as possible, Anne. We need air and the warmth from the fires. Then, too, we can hear any wild beast that may prowl around to-night," advised Polly. "If Nolla wants to go with me she takes
second place, see!"
Eleanor laughed and said, "Anywhere as long as we start!"
"Polly, first I want you to promise me not to be reckless in going through that tunnel. If you meet with the slightest danger or hazard, promise to back right out again," begged Anne.
"All right, Anne, I promise, but my shoes will mar my follower's beauty if I back down on her face."
Thus joking to make little of the danger, Polly started in through the hole. Eleanor followed and the two older girls stood watching until not a sound, or ray of the torch, could be seen. Then they went to the front of the cave to replenish the fires and prepare supper. _