By this time the heat had become terrific. Dick’s face felt as if it had been washed in a bucket of lye. Sandy’s cheeks were streaked with tears, not tears of grief, but tears of misery from smoke-tortured, bloodshot eyes.
“No use,” choked Sandy, plunging down a short embankment with Dick at his heels. “I’m about ready to quit. You see,” he explained, struggling with the lump in his throat, “I’m getting dizzier and dizzier every minute. This heat and smoke is getting me.”
Dick put out his hand with an assurance he did not feel, and patted his chum on the shoulder.
“Buck up,” Dick encouraged, “we’ll get out of this somehow. I tell you, Sandy, we’ve got to do it. Maybe this——”
Dick never finished what he was about to say. His foot slipped, and with a startled exclamation, he pitched forward, completely upsetting Sandy. In a moment both boys had rolled and slid down a steep bank. It seemed there was no end to the fall, and Dick’s heart almost failed him as he thought of what fate might meet them below. Perhaps they were rolling toward the brink of a cliff hundreds of feet high, perhaps they would fall into some rock cluttered canyon, or again, they might be drowned in some deep lake at the bottom of the bank.
Then they reached the bottom with a jarring impact that shook the breath from their bodies. When they recovered enough to look each other over, Dick was sitting upright, astride of Sandy, who lay in a crumpled, groaning heap under him. Dick heard, or thought he heard, the trickle of running water. His right foot felt pleasantly cool. When he put out his hand to investigate his fingers encountered water.
Sandy was half submerged in a tiny pool, and was sinking fast, before Dick could pull him back to safety. Dazed from the fall, Sandy sputtered a moment, then inquired excitedly:
“I guess so,” replied Dick. “At any rate there seems to be a sort of creek running along here. Are you all right, Sandy?”
“Well, if I’m not, I soon will be,” answered Sandy, more cheerfully. “Wait till I get a drink of this water. Boy, I’m dry. Do you think we’ll be safe here?”
By way of answer, Dick pointed up to the wide belt of fire. “It’s closer than it was before. We’re protected down here from the heat and smoke, but that won’t last long. In two hours this place will be as hot as a stove. Our only chance is to keep on moving.”