“HE’S NEARLY STARVED,” SAID PATRICIA
“Damn you, Faith, where’s my breakfast?” Gary stopped scraping the
granite and peered balefully out at the cat, that had just hopped
down mewing upon the bowlder in front of him. “I hate to crab--but I
saved nearly a whole candle just on the strength of my belief in
you. You might have brought me another bird, anyway. As it is, I’ve
a darned good mind to eat _you_! You’re nice and fat--I sure as heck
ought to know, the way I fed you and pampered you. Come here, darn
you--I could eat you raw!”
He reached out a long arm, his hand spread like a claw and made a
grab at Faith. His lips were drawn back from his teeth, in a grin
that may or may not have been as malevolent as it looked.
“_Gary!_ Oh, _Gary!_” Patricia’s voice had a sobbing gasp in it, and
it sounded faint and far away.
The hand and arm hung motionless in the crevice. Gary’s nostrils
quivered, his eyebrows drew together. Then he reached again for the
cat.
“I’m hearing things again--and this time I can’t kid myself I’m
asleep and dreaming. Faith, it’s up to you. Either you go rustle me
some grub like you did yesterday--only, for heck’s sake, make it a
rabbit this time--or I’ll just have to eat you! A man’s got to live
as long as he can make one breath pull the next one after it. That’s
the game, Faith----”
“_Gary!_ Oh, _Gary_!” Patricia’s voice was closer now; at least it
sounded so.
“Hello, Pat!” Gary called hoarsely, before caution warned him that
it must be his fancy and no human voice.
“Gary! Where are you? Oh, _Gary!_” She was gasping for breath. Gary
could hear her plainly now.
“Literally and figuratively, I’m in a hole!” he cried recklessly,
mocking the intensity of his desire that the voice should be real.
“_What_ hole?” Patricia’s voice panted. “I lost--the cat! Where are
you, Gary?”
Gary found himself clutching the rock with both hands. His knife had
slid to the floor of the crosscut. His knees were weak, so weak that
they kept buckling under him, letting him down so that he must pull
himself up again to the opening with his hands. It was cruel, he
thought, to keep thinking he heard Patricia coming to him.
“_Gary!_--Oh, Monty Girard! Gary _is_ up here somewhere! I heard him!
He say’s he’s in a hole! Oh, hurry up, why can’t you?”
Gary swallowed hard. That must be Pat, he thought dizzily. Bossing
Monty Girard around--it _must_ be Pat!
“This way, Pat! Be careful of the slide--I’m down underground--in a
hole. If Monty’s coming, better wait for him. I’m afraid you’ll
fall. That slide’s darn treacherous.” Gary’s eyes were blazing, his
whole body was shaking as if he had a chill. But he was trying his
best to hold himself steady, to be sensible and to play the game.
The thought flashed into his mind of men lost on the desert, who
rushed crazily toward demon-painted mirages, babbling rapturously at
the false vision. If this were a trick of his tortured
imagination--well, let it be so. He would meet realization when it
came. But now----
He could hear Patricia panting and slipping in the loose rocks no
more than a few yards away. He shouted to her, imploring her to be
careful--to wait for Monty--to come to him--he did not know what it was
he was saying. He caught himself babbling and stopped abruptly.
After all, it was Monty who first peered down past the bowlder and
into the opening, where Gary’s face showed white and staring-eyed,
but with the unquenchable grin. Monty gasped the name of his Maker
and turned as white as a living man may become. Then he turned; Gary
saw him put up his arms. Saw two summer-shod feet with silk-clad
ankles above the low shoes; saw the flicker of a skirt--and then
Patricia was sitting on the bowlder where Faith had so often kept
him company. Patricia cried out at sight of him and looked as if she
were going to faint.
“Count of Monte Cristo--in his dungeon in the Bastille--before he did
the high dive and made his get-away,” Gary cackled flippantly. “Say,
folks, how about a few eats?” Then his white, smiling face with the
terrible, brilliant eyes, slid down and down. They heard a
slithering kind of fall.
Patricia screamed and screamed again. Monty himself gave a great,
man sob before he pulled himself together. He put his arm around
Patricia’s shoulder, patting her as he would soothe a child.
“He’s just fainted,” he said, his voice breaking uncertainly. “It’s
the shock of seeing us. Can yuh-all stay here while I beat it down
to the shack and get some grub? Have yuh-all got the nerve?”
Patricia held her palms tightly to her face and fought down her
panic and the horror that chilled her heart. When she looked up at
Monty she was Patricia-on-the-job again; efficient, thinking clearly
just what must be done.
“He’s evidently nearly starved,” she said, and if her voice was not
calm, it was at least as steady as Monty’s. “Bring a can of milk and
plenty of water and a cup. And bread and a couple of eggs and a
spoon,” she said. “Some soft-boiled eggs, after awhile, should be
all right for him. But the milk is what he should have first. Oh, if
you look in my grip, you’ll find a bottle of malted milk. I brought
it in case the food was too bad at country hotels. That’s just what
I want. And hurry!”
“Yuh-all needn’t be afraid I’ll loaf on the job,” Monty told her
reproachfully; and gave her the bottle of water, and was gone before
she could apologize.
Patricia crawled down to where she could look in through the
opening. She could not see much of anything; just the rough wall of
the crosscut where the light struck, and beyond that gloom that
deepened to the darkness of night. Gary, lying directly beneath her,
she could not see at all. Yet she called him again and again.
Wistfully, endearingly, as women call frantically after the new-fled
souls of their dearest.
She was still calling heart-brokenly upon Gary when Monty returned,
puffing up the slope under a capacity load of what he thought might
be needed. Slung upon his back, like a fantastic cross, was an old,
rusted pick, the handle cracked and weather-checked and well-nigh
useless.
“Joe’s coming along behind with a shovel,” Monty informed her, when
he could summon sufficient breath for speaking. “Don’t yuh-all take
on thataway, Miss Connolly. Gary, he’s plumb fainted for joy and
weakness, I reckon. But he’s in the shade where it’s cool, and he’ll
come to himself in a little bit. I reckon we better have the malted
milk beat up and ready to hand in. I don’t reckon Gary’ll feel much
like waitin’ for meals--when he wakes up.”
Once more Patricia steadied herself by sheer will power, so that she
might do calmly and efficiently the things that must be done. For an
hour longer she did full penance for all her sins; sitting there on
the bowlder with a cup of malted milk in her hands, waiting for Gary
to regain consciousness, and fighting a terrible fear that he was
dead--that they had come too late.
Joe arrived with an old shovel that was absolutely useless for their
purpose. Such rocks as they could lift were quicker thrown out of
the half-filled shaft with their hands, using the pick now and then
to pry loose rocks that were wedged together. As for the bowlder
that blocked the opening to the crosscut, they needed dynamite for
that and would not have dared to use it if they had it; not with
Gary prisoned in the small space behind it.
Monty worked the small rocks away from the bowlder first and studied
the problem worriedly. A malapi bowlder, nearly the height of a man,
fitted into the bottom of a ten-foot incline shaft with granite
walls, is a matter difficult to handle without giant powder.
“Joe, yuh-all will have to beat it and get help. Three or four men
with strong backs we’ve got to have, and block and tackle and
chain--and some pinch bars. Yuh-all may have to go clear in to Vegas,
I reckon--but git the help!”
Joe goggled wide-eyed at the narrow opening, stared curiously at
Patricia, wiping tears from her cheeks with one hand and holding
carefully the cup of malted milk in the other.
“Gosh! Kin he last that long in there?” he blurted, and was
propelled several feet down the bluff by Monty’s hand fixed viselike
on the back of his neck.
“Uh course he’ll last--a heap sight longer than yuh-all will, if
yuh-all don’t get a move on,” Monty gritted savagely. “Fill up with
water and take a lunch, and don’t light this side of Vegas. Not much
use stopping at the ranches this side, they ain’t liable to have
what we need.”
He stood with his legs spread apart on two rocks and watched Joe
down the bluff. Whenever Joe looked back and saw Monty standing
there, his speed was accelerated appreciably. Whereat Monty grinned.
When Joe disappeared into the grove, Monty turned back to the shaft,
the weight of Gary’s misfortune heavy upon his soul.
The first thing he saw was Patricia caressing a grimy hand and thin,
bared forearm. She had just kissed it twice when she looked up and
saw Monty. Patricia did not even blush.
“He drank every drop of the milk, and now he’s called me a wretch
and a harpy because I won’t give him more,” she announced
triumphantly. “Do you think I’d better?”
“I reckon I better talk to him by hand,” Monty grinned relievedly.
“He knows mighty well he kain’t bully _me_, Miss Connolly.”
“I merely asked for fried chicken and gravy and mashed potatoes and
asparagus with drawn butter, and ripe olives and a fruit salad with
a cherry on top, and strawberry shortcake with oodles of butter
under the berries and double cream poured all over,” Gary explained,
grinning like a cheerful death’s-head through the opening. “That
isn’t much to ask--when a fellow’s been dieting the way I have for
God knows how long.”
Monty blinked very fast, and his laugh was shaky. “Well, now, if
yuh-all can compromise on boiled hen,” he drawled, “I’ll beat it
back down the bluff and shoot the head off the first one I see.”
“Oh, all right--all right, if it’ll be any accommodation,” Gary
yielded, “only for heck’s sake, make it snappy!”
Whereupon he forgot Monty and pulled Patricia’s hand in through the
opening and began to kiss it passionately.