b9bd780c9c95 Administrator (the red fox clan .txt) 📖

trickle from a spring, wending its way down to the larger stream in the valley. They lay down, side by side, and drank. Then they sat back and looked at each other in the starlight.

"Betty," said Jim impulsively, "you're a brick!"

"Am I?" said Betty. And by her voice he knew that she was pleased.

"We're not as far from the house as I'd like," he said presently. "But it will take time to locate a decent hiding place, and we've got to stick within reach of water."

To all of this Betty agreed; personally she'd like to be a thousand miles away from this hideous place, but they would have to make the best of things. That willingness of hers to accept conditions without bemoaning her fate was what had drawn from him his impulsive epithet.

"The thing to do, then," said Kendric, getting up "is to look for a likely place to spend a long day. And it may be more than one day."

Then Betty made her suggestion, offering it timidly, as though she were entering a discussion in which, rightly, she had no part:

"Up yonder," and she pointed to the abrupt ridge cutting black across the stars, "are cliffy places. It's not too far from water. There ought to be hiding places among the broken boulders. And," she concluded, "we might be able to peek out and look down and see what was happening."

No; he had not done her justice. He looked toward her, wondering for a moment. Then he said briefly: "Right," and they drank again and began climbing.

It was Betty who, fully an hour later, found the retreat which they agreed to utilize. Kendric was somewhere above her, making a hazardous way up a steep bit of cliff, when Betty's voice floated up to him.

"I think I've got it," were her words, guarded but athrill with her triumph. "Come see. It's a great hole, hid by bushes. I don't like to go poking into it alone. You can't tell, there might be a bear or a snake or something inside."

He climbed down to where she stood at the edge of a little level space, her gown gathered in a hand at each side, her pretty face thrust forward as she sought to peer into the dark before her. He saw the clump of bushes but not immediately the hole of which she spoke, so was it covered and hidden. But at length he made out the irregular opening and, thrusting the bushes aside with his rifle barrel, judged that Betty had done well. Here was a perpendicular cleft in the rock, one of those cracks which not infrequently result from the splitting of gigantic masses of rock along a well-defined flaw. In some ancient convulsion this fissure had developed, the two monster fragments of the mountain had been divided, one had slipped a little, and thereafter through the ages they had stood face to face, close together. Kendric could barely squeeze his body through; he found the space slanting off to the side; he groped forward half a dozen steps, encountered an outjutting knob of stone, slipped by it, and found that the split in the cliff now slanted off the other way and widened so that there was a space five or six feet across. How far ahead the fissure extended he could form no idea yet.

He turned back for Betty and bumped into her just inside the entrance.

"It's just the place for us tonight," he said. "Though how in the world you stumbled onto it gets me."

"The bushes grew close to the rocks," Betty explained. "I was thinking that we could creep back of them and find a little space where, with the brush on one side and the cliff on the other, we'd be hidden. And I found this hole."

"The air gets in and it's clean and fresh," he went on. "We couldn't hope for better."

"The walls are so close," whispered Betty, with a little shudder. "They give one the feeling they're going to press in and crush you."

"They widen a bit in a minute." He groped on ahead, came again to the outthrust knob and pressed by. "Here we turn a little to the right and here's room for a dozen people."

Betty hurried and stood close to him. In vain her eyes sought to penetrate the absolute dark; no slightest detail of floor or wall was offered save vaguely through the sense of touch.

"It's dark enough to smother you," she whispered. "I wonder what's ahead of us? I wish we dared have a light!"

He was silent a moment.

"Maybe we do dare," he said thoughtfully. "The crookedness of this place ought to shut off any glow from the outside. Let's go on a little further and we'll try."

He went on slowly, feeling a cautious way with his feet, his hand on the wall of rock at his side, Betty pressing on close behind him. Thus they continued another dozen paces or so. Then they stopped because they could find no means of continuing; so far as they could tell by groping with their hands the fissure narrowed again until it was no wider than the original entrance, and its irregularities presented difficulties to blind progress.

"Stand here," said Kendric. "Close to the rock. Here's a match. I'll slip back to the mouth of the place and we'll see if there's any glow gets that far."

"Hurry, then," said Betty, with a little shiver, fingers finding his and taking the match.

Appreciating her sensations he hurried off through the dark. He rounded the turn, called softly to her to strike the match and went on again until he was near the entrance. So still was it that he heard the scratching of the match against the sole of her sandal. But no flare of light came out to him.

"Did you light it?" he asked.

"Yes. Couldn't you see it?"

"Not a glimmer. Wait a minute and I'll bring in some stuff for a fire."

The match burned down until it warmed her fingers