Chapter XV: The Mountains That Burn
"So," I panted as we marched along, "what's our next destination?"
"The mountains that burn," said Spikethumb. I saw him shudder as he said it.
"I wonder whatever happened to those sharpteeth that were following us," said Shieldback.
A nearby bignose explained to us that after eating a dinosaur who had just recently died of the disease which my friend Altair had been good enough to cure, one of the sharpteeth had caught the disease as well, and since then they had not attacked.
After an incident-free journey, we arrived at the infamous mountains that burn. They are a group of six "volcanoes" (as the farwalkers say) which spurt out lots of fire-water, unlike the Smoking Mountains (which are just a few miles to the west) which throw up mostly ash.
Unfortunately, we arrived just in time for a particularly bad eruption.
"Well, looks like we'll just have to wait here for a while," said Grandpa, "until the fire-water slows."
So we waited. We waited for two weeks, but the fire-water showed no signs of slowing.
Finally Threehorn decided he couldn't wait any longer. He brought the matter up the next morning, and though the two Longnecks, not to mention me, Robert P. Thicknose, wanted to keep waiting, the majority of the herd decided to risk the fire-water and journey past the burning mountains.
So we started our journey, walking slowly and carefully across the fields of black rock with their pools of fire-water.
We made it safely past five of the six, but the tallest and most dangerous was a different story.
We were all hungry and could see a forest ahead of us as we walked across the base of the volcano. Then somebody called, "Fire-water alert!" We saw a river of fire-water coming down on us, and we ran.
While we were still on the sloped area of the mountain the fire-water gained on us, but on level ground we started to put a little distance between it and us. Then we stopped for a little while to catch our breath.
Too long.
Suddenly the fire-water caught up with the rear of our herd. Yells of agony sounded as the poor dinosaurs were fried in the hot liquid. Those of us who survived kept running, the promise of refreshment now looming large in the forest ahead of us.
Once we reached the forest we spread out and started to eat. But not for long. The fire-water was still after us, a wave larger than any I had ever seen. We ran through the trees toward a very large rock. If we could climb up on it, we would be safe.
Most of us reached it in time to see the lava sweep into the trees, starting a huge fire. The lush green forest was almost completely...
gone.