Pluck on the Long Trail Part 38

"So do we."

"All ready?"

"All ready."

He shook our hands.

"So long."

"So long."

We gave him the Scouts' salute, and out we went. We shook hands with the Red Foxes; they saluted us, and we saluted them. We crossed the yard for the trail; and when we looked back, the two women waved at us. We waved back. And now we were carrying the message again, with only twenty-one miles to go.

The trail was up grade, following beside the creek, and we knew that we must allow at least eight hours for those twenty-one miles. It was not to be a nice day, either. Mists were floating around among the hills, which was a pretty certain sign of rain.

We hiked on. I had the message, hanging inside my shirt. It felt good. I suspected that Fitz ought to be the one to carry it; he was my superior.

But he didn't ask for it, and I tried to believe that my carrying it made no difference to him. I was thinking about offering it to him, but I didn't. He had his camera, and the flag wrapped about his waist like a sash. We'd left Sally and our other stuff at the ranch, and were traveling light for this last spurt.

It was a wagon trail right down the valley, and we could travel fast.

The sun grew hotter, and a hole in my boot-sole began to raise a blister on my foot. Those fourteen days of steady trailing had been hard on leather, and on clothes, too.

We pa.s.sed several ranches. Along in the middle of the morning thunder began to growl in the hills, and we knew that we were liable to be wet.

The valley grew narrower, as if it was to pinch out, and the thunder grew louder. The storm was rising black over the hills ahead of us.

"That's going to be a big one," said Fitz.

It looked so. The clouds were the rolling, tumbling kind, where drab and black are mixed. And they came fast, to eat the sun.

It was raining hard on the hills ahead. We could see the lightning every second, awful zigzags and splits and bursting bombs, and the thunder was one long bellow.

The valley pinched to not much more than a gulch, with aspens and pines and willows, and now and then little gra.s.sy places, and the stream rippling down through the middle. Half the sky was gone, now, and the sun was swallowed, and it was time that Fitz and I found cover. We did not hunt a tree; not much! Trees are lightning attracters, and they leak, besides. But we saw where a ledge of shelf-rock cropped out, making a little cave.

"We'd better get in here and cache till the worst is over," proposed Fitz. "We'll eat our lunch while we're waiting."

That sounded like sense. So we snuggled under. We could just sit up, with our feet inside the edge.

"Boom-oom-oom!" roared the thunder, shaking the ground.

"Boom-oom-oom! Oom! Oom! Boom!"

We could feel a chill, the breeze stopped, as if scared, drops began to patter, a few, and then more, faster and faster, hard and swift as hail, the world got dark, and suddenly with roar and slash down she came, while we were eating our first sandwich put up by the two women.

That was the worst rain that Fitz or I had ever seen. Between mouthfuls we watched. The drops were big and they fell like a spurt from a hose, until all the outside world was just one sheet of water. The streaks drummed with the rumble of a hundred wagons. We couldn't see ten feet.

Before we had eaten our second sandwiches, the water was trickling through cracks in the shelf-rock roof, and dirt was washing away from the sides of our cave. Outside, the land was a stretch of yellow, liquid adobe, worked upon by the fierce pour.

"We'll have to get out of this," shouted Fitz in my ear. "This roof may cave in on us."

And out he plunged; I followed. We were soaked through in an instant, and I could feel the water running down my skin. We could scarcely see where to go or what to do; but we had bolted just in time. One end of the shelf-rock washed out like soap, and in crumpled the roof, as a ma.s.s of shale and mud! Up the gulch sounded a roaring--another, different roaring from the roaring of the rain and thunder. Fitz grabbed my hand.

"Run!" he shouted. "Quick! Get across!"

This was no time for questions, of course. I knew that he spoke in earnest, and had some good reason. Hand in hand we raced, sliding and slipping, for the creek. It had changed a heap in five minutes. It was all a thick yellow, and was swirling and yeasty. Fitz waded right in, in a big hurry to get on the other side. He let go of my hand, but I followed close. The current bit at my knees, and we stumbled on the hidden rocks. Out Fitz staggered, and up the opposite slope, through sage and bushes. The roaring was right behind us. It was terrible. We were about all in, and Fitz stopped, panting.

"See that?" he gasped, pointing back.

A wave of yellow muck ten feet high was charging down the gulch like a squadron of cavalry in solid formation. Logs and tree-branches were sticking out of it, and great rocks were tossing and floating. Another second, and it had pa.s.sed, and where we had come from--trail and shelf-rock and creek--was nothing but the muddy water and driftwood tearing past, with the pines and aspens and willows trembling amidst it.

But it couldn't reach us.

"Cloud-burst," called Fitz, in my ear.

I nodded. He was white. I felt white, too. That had been a narrow escape.

"We could have climbed that other side, couldn't we?" I asked.

"We were on the wrong side of the creek, though. We might have been cut off from where we're going. That's what I thought of. See?"

Wise old Fitz. That was Scouty, to do the best thing no matter how quick you must act. Of course, with the creek between us and Green Valley, and the bridges washed out and the water up, we might have been held back for half a day!

The yellow flood boiled below, but the rain was quitting, and we might as well move on, anyway.

According to what we had been told of the trail, up at the head of the gulch it turned off, and crossed the creek on a high bridge, and made through the hills northwest for the town. Now we must shortcut to strike it over in that direction.

The rain was quitting; the sun was going to shine. That was a hard climb, through the wet and the stickiness and the slipperiness, with our clothes weighting us and clinging to us and making us hotter. But up we pushed, puffing. Then we followed the ridge a little way, until we had to go down. Next we must go up again, for another ridge.

Fitz plugged along; so did I. The sun came out and the ground steamed, and our clothes gradually dried, as the brush and trees dried; but somehow I didn't feel extra good. My head thumped, and things looked queer. It didn't result in anything serious, after the hike was over, so I guess that maybe I was hungry and excited. The rain had soaked our lunch as well as us and we threw it away in gobs; we counted on supper in Green Valley.

We didn't stop. Fitz was going strong. He was steel. And if I could hold out I mustn't say a word. So it was up-hill and down-hill, across country through brush and scattered timber, expecting any time to hit the trail or come in sight of the town. And how my head did thump!

Finally in a draw we struck a cow-path, and we stuck to this, because it looked as if it was going somewhere. Other cow-paths joined it, and it got larger and larger and more hopeful; and about five o'clock by the sun we stepped into a main traveled road. Hurrah! This was the trail for us.

The rain had not spread this far, and the road was dusty. A signboard said, pointing: "Brown's Big Store, Green Valley's Leader, One Mile." We were drawing near! I tried not to limp, and not to notice my head, as we spurted to a fast walk, straight-foot and quick, so that we would enter triumphantly. As like as not people would be looking out for us, as this was the last day; and we would show them Scouts' spirit. We Elks had fought treachery and fire and flood, and we had left four good men along the way; those had been a strenuous fifteen days, but we were winning through at last.

That last mile seemed to me longer than any twenty. The dust and gravel were hot, the sun flamed, my blister felt like a cushion full of needles, my legs were heavy and numb, that old head thumped like a drum, and I had a notion that if I slackened or lost my stride I'd never finish out that mile. So when Fitz stumbled on a piece of rock, and his strap snapped and he stopped to pick up his camera, I kept moving. He would catch me.

A shoulder of rock stuck out and the road curved around it; and when I had curved around it, too, then I saw something that sent my heart into my throat, and brought me up short. With two leaps I was back, around the rock again, in time to sign Fitz, coming: "Halt! Silence!" And I motioned him close behind the shoulder.

Beyond the rock the road stretched straight and clear, with the town only a quarter of a mile. But only about a hundred yards away, where the creek flowed close to the road, were two fellows, fishing. One was Bill Duane!

Fitz obeyed my signs. He gazed at me, startled and anxious.

"What is it?" he asked, pantomime.

I held up two fingers, for two enemies. Then I cautiously peeked out.

Bill Duane was leaving the water, as if he was coming; and the other fellow was coming. The other fellow was Mike Delavan. They must have seen me before I had jumped back. We might have circuited them, but now it was too late. I never could stand a chase over the hills, and maybe Fitz couldn't.

But there was a way, and a chance, and I made up my mind in a twinkling.

I jerked out the message and held it at Fitz. He shook his head. I signed what we would do--what I would do and what he must do. He shook his head. He wouldn't. We would stick together. I clinched my teeth and waved my fist under his nose, and signed that he _must_. He was the one.