just what happened neither the motor boys nor the others knew exactly. nor did they take any note of the order in which for the next few moments some surprising things took place. they all remembered up to the point where bob yelled something about the landslide coming their way. then all was confusion.
for not only did the landslide come their way, but it came directly over them, overwhelming them; and only for the fact that the horses had been tethered some distance away from where the blue rock started to slide, they, also, would have been carried down the side of the mountain.
“here she is!” yelled jerry, and the next instant he and the others were carried away.
down the mountain they went, being pushed ahead of the landslide itself, and it was this alone that saved them from instant death. the slide of that peculiar blue rock had started perhaps half a mile up thunder mountain. as it gathered[229] weight and momentum it pushed ahead of it sections of earth, with rocks, trees and bushes.
the motor boys, with bill and tinny, had been standing on the edge of the trail which was gashed into ridges and furrows by the rain and landslide of the night before. and the section of ground on which they were standing was carried along, pushed as an engine pushes a string of freight cars ahead of it.
had the motion of the landslide been regular it would not have been so dangerous, but it was far from even. like the undulations of the sea, it moved up and down, shifting this way and that, making the boys and the two men dizzy and ill with the peculiar motion.
“i guess it’s all up with us!” muttered cromley.
“let’s see if we can’t get out of the way!” cried ned.
he started to run to one side, across the path of the slide, but he had only taken a few steps before an undulation of the ground threw him down. bob, who had started to follow ned, was in a like predicament.
“we’ve got to help them!” shouted tinny to jerry.
these two were a little distance from the lads who had fallen. but before they could reach them to give aid a mass of bushes, torn loose from the mountainside where they had been growing[230] for years, swept tinny, jerry and bill off their feet.
they were all down now, lying or sitting on the mass of earth that was being pushed ahead of the landslide.
the main slide was gathering more stones, rocks and trees in its path as it worked down the side of the mountain, but, as yet, the largest mass of débris was some distance above the boys.
all about them, above, below, and on either side, were patches of blue clay and blue rock, which gave the name to this particular locality. but, mingled with all this, was a great quantity of grass roots and soft bushes, so that the elasticity of this vegetation helped to protect those in peril.
“can’t we do something?” cried bob, in desperation. he dug his hands into the shifting soil until he broke his finger nails, but nothing availed to hold him back. the others were doing the same thing, striving desperately to save themselves from what seemed certain death.
faster and faster the slide came careening down thunder mountain. there were rumblings and roarings almost as terrifying as the thunder and lightning of the night before.
“this is fierce, tinny!” gasped jerry, as a big rock narrowly missed the head of the tall lad.
“it sure is!” was the gloomy answer, as they[231] slid along together, like passengers on some grotesque, gigantic escalator. “thunder mountain is living up to its name!”
jerry was about to make some reply, but suddenly they were all overwhelmed with soft dirt, brushwood and bushes, together with a patch of young trees. a quick shift in a part of the slide had sent them head over heels into a gully, and then had thrown down on top of them this mixed mass.
for several seconds there was ominous silence, and an onlooker in a place of safety might reasonably have supposed it was all over with the motor boys.
but, as if in a daze, jerry gradually found himself breathing. then, though there was a strange sense of an oppressive weight, he managed to move and found that he was gradually freeing himself.
about the same time, and one after another, the others in the party found that they were not even seriously hurt. the old miner managed to wriggle out from beneath a mass of soft, blue earth. he was followed by ned and bob. jerry staggered to his feet, shook himself as a dog does on coming from the water, thereby dislodging from him a lot of gravel and dirt.
“where’s tinny?” asked bob, in a strained[232] voice, as he shook his head to get rid of a lot of dirt in his ears.
“i don’t know,” jerry started to say, but the voice of the mine owner interrupted him.
“here i am—a little winded but still in the ring!” cried mallison. his face that he thrust out from the center of an uprooted bush was bleeding, and at first the boys thought he had been seriously hurt. but he wiped the blood off with a dirty hand, thereby making his face look worse, but proving that the cuts were only superficial.
then, slowly, staggering, limping, sore and bruised, but whole in limb though not exactly sound in wind, they managed to stand on what seemed solid ground—a great shelf of rock. all about them was a mass of débris deposited by the landslide. there were hills and hollows, mounds and gullies, great cracks and fissures in the bluerock-strewn earth.
“i guess the worst is over,” observed ned.
“i hope so,” murmured jerry. “if there’s any more to come i don’t want to be in it.”
“look where we came down!” exclaimed bob, pointing upward.
they had been carried down the side of thunder mountain for nearly a thousand feet, the advance guard, so to speak, of one of the worst landslides in that part of the country. only because the slide had pushed them ahead of it, surrounding[233] them with soft bushes which acted as a screen, had they been able to live through it.
they looked about them in a daze. and it was still in a daze that bob looked at some object resting on its side near a great blue rock. it was an object that caused him to look a second time and then a third. and after that he cried in a hoarse voice:
“the treasure chest! there it is! fellows, we’ve found it!”
he pointed a trembling finger at a small, but strong, wooden box which lay amid the débris brought down the slope of thunder mountain by the landslide.
