Until about two of the afternoon the deluge continued. Our unique topic of conversation was the marvel of how it could keep it up! We could not imagine more water falling were every stream and lake in the mountains to be lifted to the heavens and poured down again.
"Where the devil does it all come from?" marvelled Old, again and again. "Don't seem like no resevoy, let alone clouds, could hold so much!"
"And where does it go to?" I supplemented.
"I reckon some of those plains people could tell you," surmised Yank shrewdly.
At two o'clock the downpour ceased as abruptly as though it had been turned off at a spigot. Inside of twenty minutes the clouds had broken, to show beyond them a dazzling blue sky. Intermittent flashes and bands of sunlight glittered on the wet trees and bushes or threw into relief the black bands of storm clouds near the horizon.
Immensely cheered, we threw aside our soggy blankets and sallied forth.
"Great Christmas!" cried Johnny, who was in the advance. "Talk about your mud!"
We did talk about it. It was the deepest, most tenacious, slipperiest, most adhesive mud any fiend ever imagined. We slid and floundered as though we had on skates; we accumulated balls of it underfoot; and we sank disconcertingly half-leg deep at every third step. Our first intention had been to go up to town; but we soon revised that, and went down to the Moreña cabin instead, with the idea of looking after the two horses. The beasts, very shaggy underneath and plastered above, stood humped up nose to tail. We looked into the cabin. The roof had leaked like a sieve; and the interior was dripping in a thousand places.
"Reckon even the tent was better after all," acknowledged Yank, looking with disfavour on the muddy floor.
We returned to the tent and made shift to get a fire going. After cooking some hot food, we felt better, and set about drying our blankets. In the cañon we could hear the river roaring away hollowly.
"I'll bet she's on the rampage!" said Old.
"I'll bet she's got my cradle and all of my tools!" I cried, struck with a sudden thought.
And then, about as we commenced to feel cheerful and contented again, the scattered black clouds began to close ranks. One by one the patches of blue sky narrowed and disappeared.