A DARING RESCUE.
A yell of consternation broke from Clancy’s lips. Merriwell and Ballard
were silent. With white, drawn faces and wide, staring eyes, all three
of the boys stood as though rooted to the ground.
The accident had happened so suddenly that those below were stunned. It
took them a few moments to realize the awful thing that had occurred.
Frank was the first to break the thrall of inaction that bound them.
“He can’t be badly hurt, fellows!” he called. “It wasn’t much of a
fall—about ten feet to the ledge and four or five feet from the ledge
to the bowlder. He’s stunned, that’s all, but worse things are likely
to happen if we don’t get him down before he begins to revive.”
“How in thunder did the rope break away from the paloverde?” cried
Ballard. “Darrel said he was careful to tie it securely, and——”
“Never mind that now, Pink,” Merriwell interrupted. “As long as
Darrel’s unconscious he won’t make a move, but when he begins to come
to himself, he’s liable to stir around. If he does that, he’s going off
that bowlder, sure!”
Certainly it was a gruesome situation for Darrel. His body hung over
the projecting bowlder, face downward, and only the tree’s twisted and
stunted trunk, rising at the bowlder’s edge, kept him from falling to
the bottom of the wall. It was a precarious support at best, however,
and the slightest move on Darrel’s part would dislodge him in spite of
the tree.
“Get him down?” breathed Ballard. “How the blazes can we do that,
Chip? The best way is to get more ropes and go down to him from the
paloverde.”
“It would take too long.” Frank, his mind working swiftly, had picked
up the end of the spliced rope and was making it fast around his waist.
“I’m going up after him,” he finished briefly, and started for the
lower end of the fissure.
If Ballard and Clancy had watched Merriwell with bated breath before,
when only the recovery of a five-dollar football was to be the result
of his dangerous climb, how much greater was their trepidation now,
when the life of a chum was at stake?
The worst feature of the nerve-racking situation for Ballard and Clancy
was this, that they were absolutely powerless to help Merriwell. No
more than one could make the climb through the fissure, and no more
than one could work around the jutting bowlder and the stunted tree.
For the lads in the bottom of the cañon, a little active work would
have loosened the tension of their taut nerves and made the situation
more endurable. There was nothing for them to do just then, however,
but to wait and watch.
The swiftness and precision with which Frank scaled the fissure aroused
the admiration of his chums, even in that breathless moment. Frank’s
brain was as cool and his nerves as steady as though life or death was
not hanging on the result of his efforts.
“Good old Merry!” whispered Ballard huskily. “He’s going as steady as a
clock, and doesn’t seem to have the least notion that Darrel may tumble
down on him at any moment.”
“Talk about your true sportsmen,” returned Clancy, “if a piece of work
like that doesn’t prove a fellow is one, then I don’t know what does.”
With the rope trailing after him and gradually paying out from the coil
below as he climbed higher and higher, Merriwell continued his rapid
ascent of the crevice. On reaching the narrow part, he shifted around
it with an agility and skill that were wonderful to see. Getting back
into the fissure again, at a point where it widened, he made his way
on hands and knees to the place directly over the point where the wall
sloped inward to the base, and began another inward slope to the shelf.
Getting out of the crevice and upon the slope was a hair-raising
performance, but Frank accomplished it successfully. Then began
the crawl from projection to projection and from one stunted bush
to another, up the face of the cliff. At last the daring youth was
directly under the bowlder and the stunted tree that supported the
unconscious form of Darrel. With his left arm over the bowlder and his
feet in crevices of the rocks, Frank began removing the rope from his
waist with his right hand.
“Good work, Chip!” shouted Ballard. “What are you going to do now? How
do you expect to get Darrel down? Can’t we do something to help?”
“Nothing you fellows can do, Ballard,” Frank answered. “I’ve got to
hang on with my eye winkers and work with one hand.”
“If Darrel should make a move,” cried Clancy, in a spasm of fear, “he’d
bring you both down!”
“I’ll have the rope around him before he moves,” was the reply.
Working with one hand, as Frank was obliged to do, it was a difficult
task to manage the rope. If the cable were dropped, all Frank’s work
would have gone for nothing, and before he could do it over again
Darrel would probably revive and slip from the bowlder.
First, Frank passed the rope around the trunk of the stunted tree. A
brief examination of the tree had convinced him that it was strongly
wedged into the rocks and could be depended upon to support Darrel’s
weight.
In getting the hempen strands around the tree, Frank was obliged to
push the rope over the trunk, then hold it in his teeth while he
withdrew his hand and passed it around the trunk a second time. Again
taking the cable in his teeth, he withdrew his hand to lay hold of it
once more. Thus he had made a half hitch around the tree and could
control the rope under the pull of a heavy weight.
His next step was to make the end of the cable fast about Darrel’s
shoulders, under the arms. This was not so difficult as the work with
the tree had been, for Darrel hung from the bowlder with head and
shoulders down.
After getting the cable about Darrel’s body, Frank used his right hand
and his teeth and rove the end into a bowline knot. Scarcely had he
accomplished this, when Darrel uttered a low groan and attempted to
shift his position. The moment he did this, he slipped from the bowlder.
A yell of horror came from Ballard and Clancy. To their frightened eyes
it looked as though both Darrel and Merriwell would be precipitated
to the bottom of the cañon. The rope, however, and Frank’s quickness
served to avert the catastrophe.
Releasing his left arm from the bowlder, Frank gripped the trailing
rope under the tree with both hands. His weight, on one side of the
dwarfed trunk, served to balance Darrel’s weight on the other side,
and the two, for a few terrible moments, swung into mid-air. Then,
carefully but as quickly as possible, Frank found fresh footholds, and
so lessened the weight on his end of the rope. Just as he had planned,
Darrel began slipping downward, the rope sliding through Frank’s hands
and around the tree trunk.
Drooping limply in the noose that encircled his body, Darrel twisted
and swayed in sickening fashion as he dropped foot by foot down the
face of the cliff. In a few minutes he had been lowered into the
outstretched arms of Ballard and Clancy, and the lads below sent up a
cheer that reverberated loudly between the cañon walls.
Frank’s descent was made safely and speedily, for he knotted the rope
around the trunk of the tree and slid down its length to the side of
his chums. Ballard had Darrel’s head on his knee, and Clancy had gone
to the creek for a capful of cold water. Merriwell, breathing heavily,
dropped down on the rocks.
“You got that rope around Darrel just in the nick of time, Chip!” said
the admiring Ballard. “If you had been a second later, Darrel would
have brought both of you down in a heap. Gee, man, but it was a close
call!”
“A miss is as good as a mile, Pink,” answered Merry.
Clancy arrived with the water and allowed it to trickle over the white,
haggard face of the unconscious lad. Darrel’s eyes flickered open,
and a haunting expression of pain was in them as they rested on his
friends. He ground his teeth to stifle a groan.
“Are you badly hurt, Darrel?” queried Frank.
“My—my left arm,” panted Darrel, “it’s broken, I think.”
With a muttered exclamation, Frank threw himself to his knees close
beside Darrel. As he lifted him by the shoulders, the left arm swung
limply and a moan was wrenched from Darrel’s lips.
“The arm is broken,” said Frank, “there’s no doubt about that. Clan,”
he added, “go to the camp for our mounts. You needn’t bring a horse for
Darrel—he can ride behind me on Borak.”
“Going to take him to Ophir?” asked Clancy, bounding to his feet and
starting up the cañon.
“No, to Dolliver’s. Hustle, old man!”
Clancy disappeared up the narrow trail at a keen run.
“I—I’ve made a monkey’s fist of this, all right,” muttered Darrel. “If
I’d left you alone, Chip, you’d have got the ball with ground to spare.
But I had to try to star myself, and this is what comes of it.”
“Don’t fret about that, old man,” said Merry. “The thing to do now is
to have the arm attended to.”
“Why don’t you take him to the camp?” asked Ballard. “We could get
there in a mighty small part of the time it would take to reach
Dolliver’s.”
“Darrel has got to have a comfortable bed, for one thing, Pink,” Merry
answered. “Mainly, though, we can use the phone from Dolliver’s and
get the doctor out from Ophir by motor car. By going to the ranch at
the mouth of the cañon, we’ll not only save time, but make Darrel more
comfortable into the bargain.”
“What happened to me?” queried Darrel, smothering his pain with a
heroic effort. “Did I drop all the way down the cliff wall? I can’t
remember a thing after hitting the shelf.”
“You rolled off the shelf and lodged on a bowlder,” Frank answered. “We
got you down by means of the rope.”
“‘We’ didn’t have a thing to do with it,” spoke up Ballard. “It was
Chip did it all, Darrel. He swarmed up the side of the cliff with the
rope, took a half hitch around a bit of a tree, and then lowered——”
“Don’t worry him with all that,” struck in Merry. “Just lie as quietly
as you can, Darrel. Here, put your head on this.”
Jerking off his coat, he rolled it up for a pillow, and Darrel was
gently lowered until he was lying at full length on the rocks. His eyes
closed. Although he made no sound, yet the contracting muscles of his
face showed that he was fighting hard with pain.
At last a clatter of hoofs announced the coming of Clancy with two led
horses. Handy and the rest had not returned from up the cañon, and
Clancy had seen nothing of Fritz, Silva, or the professor. Because of
his failure to see anybody at the camp, he had been unable to report
the accident.
“Everybody will know about it soon enough, Clan,” said Frank. “Now, you
ride on to Dolliver’s as fast as you can and use the phone. Ask Mr.
Bradlaugh to bring out the doctor in his motor car. Ballard and I will
come on with Darrel.”
“On the jump,” answered Clancy.
Merriwell took the reins of the led horses, and the red-headed chap dug
in with his heels and vanished toward the mouth of the cañon.