“IT’S THE VOICE! IT AIN’T HUMAN!”
Gary had been imprisoned in the crosscut eight days, counting the
time until noon. He had stretched his lunch to the third day; human
endurance could not compass a longer abstinence than that, so long
as the smallest crumb remained. He had drunk perhaps a quart of
water from the canteen he had carried up the bluff the day before
the catastrophe, and had left the canteen there, expecting to use it
for drilling. With a fresh canteen filled that morning at the creek,
he had something over three gallons to begin with. Wherefore the
tortures of thirst had not yet assailed him, though he had from the
first hour held himself rigidly to the smallest ration he thought he
could endure and keep his reason.
Through all the dragging hours, fighting indomitably against despair
when hope seemed but a form of madness, he had never once yielded to
temptation and taken more during any one day than he had fixed as
the amount that must suffice.
He had almost resigned himself to death. And then Faith, unwittingly
playing providence, had roused a fighting demon within him. The wild
dove had won back a little of his failing strength just when a
matter of hours would have pushed him over the edge into lassitude,
that lethargy which is nature’s anesthetic when the end approaches,
and the final coma which eases a soul across the border.
While Patricia slept exhaustedly in the cabin below, Gary babbled of
many things in the crosscut. He awoke, believing he had dreamed that
an automobile drove into the cañon the evening before. Nevertheless
he decided that, since there was no hope of cutting away the granite
wall with his knife, or of lifting the bowlder, Atlas-like, on his
shoulders and heaving it out of the incline shaft, he might as well
use what strength and breath he had in shouting.
“About one chance in ten thousand that anybody would hear me,” he
told himself. “But getting out alone is a darned sight longer shot.
Trick camera work--and the best to be had--it would take, to make me
even _look_ like getting out. My best bet is a correct imitation of
the Johnnywater Voice. But I wouldn’t advise anybody to bet any
money on me.”
He was shouting all the while Monty was explaining to Patricia how
the Voice had come to give Johnnywater Cañon so sinister a
reputation. But his voice came muffled to the outer surface of the
bowlder-strewn bluff, and diminished rapidly down the slope. Joe
might have heard it had he been awake, since his ears were
sufficiently keen to hear Gary when he shouted the night before. But
Joe was asleep with his head under the tarp. And Patricia and Monty
were talking inside the cabin. So Gary shouted until he could shout
no more, and gave up and rested awhile.
After that he stood leaning heavily against the wall and scraped
doggedly at the seams in the granite with his knife-blade.
“----and I love you, Pat. I wouldn’t have you different if I could.
Gary.”
Patricia was obliged to wipe the tears away from her eyes before she
could read the last two lines of Gary’s last letter. As it was she
splotched the penciled words with a great drop or two, before she
hid her face in her arms folded upon a high shoulder of the rock on
which she sat, and cried until no more tears would come.
After a while she heard Monty calling her name, but at first she did
not care. The contents of that last letter proved that it had been
written three weeks ago, evidently a day or so before Gary had
ridden over to Monty’s camp. She was afraid to think what might have
befallen since.
It was the Voice of the rim rock that roused her finally. She stood
up and listened, sure that it was Gary. To-day the beseeching note
was in the Voice, and all Monty’s talk of its elusiveness went for
naught. It was Gary up there, she was sure of that. And she knew
that he was in trouble. So she rolled his letters to her for easier
carrying, cupped her palms around her mouth, shouted that she was
coming, and started up the bluff.
At the cabin Monty heard her and came running down to the creek.
“That ain’t Gary!” he shouted to her. “That’s the Voice I was
tellin’ about. Yuh-all better keep down off that bluff, Miss
Connolly!”
Patricia poised on a rock and looked back.
“Oh, come and help find him! That’s Gary--I _know_ it’s Gary!” Then
she turned and went on climbing recklessly over the treacherous,
piled rocks.
“Come on back!” Monty shouted again peremptorily. “It’s the Voice!
It ain’t human!”
But Patricia would not listen, would not stop. She went on climbing,
bareheaded, her breath coming in gasps from the altitude and the
pace she was trying to keep.
Monty looked after her, shouted again. And when he saw that nothing
would stop her, he turned back, running to the cabin. There he
searched frantically for a canteen, found none and filled an empty
beer bottle with water, sliding it into his pocket. Then, with
Patricia’s sailor hat in one hand, he started after her.
When Patricia was forced to stop and get her breath, the spotted cat
appeared suddenly from somewhere among the rocks. She looked up into
Patricia’s face and meowed wistfully.
“Oh, cat, you led me once to-day--and Gary likes you. He called you
Faith. Oh, Faith, where’s Gary? He _is_ up on the bluff, isn’t he? I
believe you know! Come on, Faith--help me find Gary!”
“Meow-w?” Faith inquired in her own way and hopped upon the bowlder
a few feet above Patricia. Patricia, with a hysterical little laugh,
followed her.
From farther down the bluff Monty shouted, climbing with long steps.
Patricia looked back, climbed another rock and stopped to call down
to him.
“I’m following the cat!” she cried. “Faith is leading me to Gary!”
Then she went on.
Fifty yards below her Monty swore to himself. Insanity was leading
her, in Monty’s opinion; he wished fervently that he had left her in
town. But since she was here, and crazily climbing the bluff at the
mocking behest of that phantom Voice, Monty would have to follow and
look after her.