A REAL WOLF
When the loiterer came over the second ridge into view of the booming
chasm in the top of the plateau, he saw the others down near the
brink. The baby had been laid on a soft bed of pine needles, and Blake
was leading the ladies down to look over into the abyss, one on each
arm.
Ashton's chagrin flared into jealous hate. He felt certain that the
girl was quite capable of strolling along the extreme edge of the
precipice without a trace of giddiness. Yet now she was clinging to
Blake even more closely than was Genevieve. There was more than
apprehension in the clasp of her little brown hand on the engineer's
shoulder. Her cheek brushed his sleeve.
The anger of the onlooker was so intense that he did not see Gowan
riding towards him from the left. The puncher dismounted and came
forward, his cold gaze fixed on Ashton's face.
"So you're beginning to savvy it, too," he remarked.
Ashton confronted him, vainly attempting to mask his telltale look
and color with a show of hauteur. "I never discuss personal matters
with acquaintances of your stamp," he said.
"That's too bad," coolly deplored Gowan. "Maybe you've heard the
saying about cutting off your nose to spite your face."
"What do you mean?"
"If you want to go it alone, I can't stop you," replied the puncher.
"Needn't think I'm sucking around you for any favors or friendship. If
this was my range, I would run you off it so fast you'd reach
Stockchute with your tongue hanging out like a dog's. That's how much
I like you."
"The feeling is fully reciprocated, I assure you," rejoined Ashton.
"All right. Now what're we going to do about him?--each play a lone
hand, or make it pardners for this deal?"
"I--fail to understand," hesitated Ashton.
"No, you don't," jeeringly contradicted the puncher. "It's a
three-cornered fight. You see it now, even if you have been too big a
fool to see it before. We can settle ours after. But I'm free to own
up to it that you're a striped skunk if you won't work with me first
to get rid of him. Look at him now--and him married!"
Ashton's flush deepened to purple. "Married!--yes, married!" he choked
out.
"Right alongside his wife, too!" Gowan thrust the goad deeper. "You'd
think even that brand of skunk would have more decency. Not that his
wife is any friend of mine, like she is yours. But for a man with such
a wife and baby ... with Miss Chuckie! The--"
Gowan ended with a string of oaths so virulent that even Ashton's
half-mad anger was checked.
"You may be--er--I fear that we--Perhaps it's not so bad as it
appears!" he stammered.
"_Bah!_" disgustedly sneered the puncher, and he strode on ahead,
leaving Ashton torn between rage and doubt and terror of his own
furious jealousy.
The others continued to stand on a flat ledge that here formed the lip
of the canyon. Genevieve was trembling with awed delight. Her husband
and the girl appeared more calm, but they were drinking in the
grandeur of the tremendous gorge below them with no less intense
appreciation of its gloomy vastness.
Upstream, to their left, the precipices jutted so far out from each
wall of the canyon that they overlapped, a thousand or fifteen hundred
feet from the top. But downstream the upper part of the chasm flared
to a width that permitted the noonday sun to penetrate part way down
through the blue-black shadows.
"O-o-o-oh!" sighed Genevieve, for the tenth time, and she clung
tighter than ever to the strong arm of her husband. "Isn't it
fearfully, fearfully delightful? It makes the soles of my feet tingle
to look at it!"
"That tickly feeling!" exclaimed Isobel. "I often ride up here to the
canyon, I do so love to feel that way! Only with me it's like ants
crawling up and down my back."
"O-o-o-oh!" again sighed Genevieve. "It--it so overpowers one!"
"It's sure some canyon," admitted her husband. "That French artist Dore
ought to have seen it."
"If only we had a copy of Dante's Inferno to read here on the brink!"
she whispered.
"It always reminds me of Coleridge's poem," murmured Isobel, and she
quoted in an awed whisper:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man,
Down to the sunless sea.
"Fortunately for us, this is a canyon, not a string of measureless
caverns," said Blake. "It can be measured, one way or another. If I
had a transit, I could calculate the depth at any point where the
water shows--triangulate with a vertical angle. But it would cause a
long delay to send on for a transit. We shall first try to chain down
at that gulch break."
Genevieve shrank back from the verge of the precipice and drew the
others after her.
"Dear!" she exclaimed, "I did not dream it was so fearful. One has to
see to realize! You will not go down--promise me you will not go
down!"
"Now, now, little woman," reproached Blake. "What's become of my
partner?"
"But baby--? If you should leave him fatherless!"
"Better that than for him to have a father who is a quitter! Just
wait, Sweetheart. That break looks much less overwhelming than these
sheer cliffs. You know I shall not attempt anything foolhardy. If it
is not possible to get down without too great risk, I shall give it up
and send for a transit."
"Oh, will you?" exclaimed Isobel, hardly less apprehensive than his
wife. "Why not wait anyway until you can send for your transit?"
"Because I cannot triangulate the bottom within half a mile upstream
from where the tunnel would have to be located. That roar and the
wildness of the water wherever we can see it is proof that it is
flowing down a heavy grade. At the point where I triangulated it might
be above the level of Dry Mesa, and way below the mesa here at the
tunnel site."
"You could triangulate at the first place where the bottom can be
seen, beyond here," suggested Genevieve.
"Suppose it proved to be lower than Dry Mesa, wouldn't that still
leave us up in the air?" he asked. "Like this--"
He pulled out his notebook and drew a rough sketch.
[Transcriber's Note: an illustration showing "Elevation of bench-mark
at foot of chute in Dry Fork Gulch" appears in the text here.]
"I see, Dear," said his wife. "When do you plan to go down?"
"Tomorrow morning."
"Can you wait until we come up from the ranch?"
"Yes. Mr. Knowles will no doubt be back by then. He can bring you out
early."
"We shall come early, anyway," said Isobel.
"Of course!" added Genevieve. She drew a deep breath. "I shall see the
place before you attempt to descend."
Her husband nodded reassuringly and looked around to where Gowan and
Ashton stood waiting, several yards from one another.
"About lunch time, isn't it?" he remarked. "Mr. Gowan will wish to be
starting soon to bring up his second load."
At the suggestion, the ladies hastened to spread out their own lunch
and the one brought by Blake. When called by Isobel, Gowan came
forward to join the party, with rather less than his usual reserve in
his speech and manner.
Ashton was the last to seat himself on the springy cushion of brown
pine needles, and he sat throughout the meal in moody silence. Blake
and the ladies attributed this to the fatigue of working through the
long hot morning while suffering from his unhealed wound. He repulsed
the sympathetic attentions of the Blakes. But he could not long
continue to resist the kindly concern of the girl. After lunch she
made him lie down in the shade while she bathed his wound with a good
part of the small supply of water remaining in the canteens.
Gowan had been asking questions about the work. Blake explained at
some length why he considered it necessary not only to descend into
the canyon but to carry the line of levels down along the bed of the
subterranean stream to this point opposite Dry Fork Gulch. When Isobel
drew apart with Ashton the puncher did not look at them, though his
eyes narrowed to slits and his mouth straightened.
"You shore have nerve to tackle it, Mr. Blake," he commented.
"Everything alive that I know of that's ever gone down into Deep Canyon
hasn't ever come up again, except it had wings."
"We'll prove that the rule has an exception," replied Blake, smiling
away the reawakened apprehension of his wife.
Gowan shook his head doubtfully, and strolled down the slope to peer
into the canyon. The level was directly in his path, set up firmly on
its tripod, about six feet from the brink. The puncher stopped beside
it to squint through the telescope.
"You'll have one--peach of a time seeing anything through this
contraption down there," he remarked. "I can't see even right here in
the sun."
"The telescope is out of focus," explained Blake. "Turn that screw on
the side." Gowan twisted a protruding thumbscrew. "Not that--the one
above it," directed Blake.
"Can't stop to fool now," replied the puncher. "I've got to hustle
along."
He started hastily around between the level and the precipice. The toe
of his boot struck hard against the iron toe of the outer tripod-leg.
He stumbled and sprawled forward on his hands and knees. Behind him
the instrument toppled over towards the brink.
Genevieve cried out in alarm at Gowan's fall. Her husband sprang to
the rescue--not of the puncher, but of the level. It had crashed down
with its head to the chasm, and was sliding out over the brink. Blake
barely caught it by the tip of one of the legs as it swung up for the
plunge. He drew it back and set it up to see what damage had been done
to the head. Gowan watched him, tight-lipped.
"This is luck!" exclaimed the engineer, after a swift examination.
"Nothing broken--only knocked out of adjustment. I can fix that in
half an hour. She struck with the telescope turned sideways. You must
have set the clamp screw."
The puncher's face darkened. "Wish the--infernal machine had gone
plumb down to hell!" he growled. "It came near tripping me over the
edge."
"My apology," said Blake. "I spraddled the tripod purposely to keep it
from being upset."
"Oh, Kid, you've hurt yourself," called Isobel, as the puncher began
to wrap a kerchief about his hand. "Come here and let me bandage it."
"No," he replied. "Two babies are enough for you to coddle at one
time. I've got to hit out."
He turned his back on Blake and hurried up to his horse. The engineer
followed as far as the nearest tree, where he set up the instrument in
the shade and began to adjust it.
"Good thing she has platinum crosshairs," he said to Ashton. "A fall
like that would have been certain to break the old-style spiderweb
hairs."
Ashton did not reply. He was absorbed in a murmured conversation with
Isobel. Blake completed the adjustments of the level and stretched out
beside his wife to play with his gurgling son. A half hour of this
completed the two hours that he had set apart for the noon rest. He
placed the baby back in his wife's lap and stood up to stretch his
powerful frame.
"How about it, Ashton?" he inquired. "Think you feel fit to rod this
afternoon? Don't hesitate to say no, if that's the right answer. I
expect my wife and Miss Chuckie, between them, can help me carry the
line as far as the camp."
"I can do it alone," interposed the girl. "Let them both stay here and
rest all afternoon."
"No, Miss Chuckie. I can and shall do my work," insisted Ashton,
springing up with unexpected briskness for one who had appeared so
fatigued. "It is you and Mrs. Blake who must stay here to rest--unless
you wish to keep us company."
"Might we not go to the new camp and put it in order?" suggested
Genevieve.
"What if that outlaw should come sneaking back?" objected Ashton. "It
seems to me you should keep with us."
"He would not trouble us," replied Isobel.
"Yet if he should? Anyway, Blake and I saw a wolf up here the other
day."
"A real wolf! Where?"
"Yes," answered Blake. "Over in the ravine the other side of the head
of Dry Fork Gulch."
"He may attack you," argued Ashton.
The girl laughed. "You're still a tenderfoot to think a wolf wouldn't
know better than that. Wish he didn't! It would mean the saving of a
half dozen calves this winter." She flashed out her long-barreled
automatic pistol and knocked a cone from the tree above Blake's head
with a swiftly aimed shot.
Blake caught the cone as it fell and looked at the bullet hole through
its center. "Unless that was an accident, I should call it some
shooting," he remarked.
"Accident!" she called back. "Stand sideways and see what happens to
your cigar."
"No, thanks. I'll take your word for it. Just lit this one, and I've
only a few left. By by, Tommy! Don't let the wolves eat mamma and the
poor little cowlady!"
He picked up the level and started off at a swinging stride. Ashton
followed several paces behind. His face was sullen and heavy, but in
their merriment over Blake's banter, the ladies failed to observe his
expression.
They rested for a while longer. Then, after venturing down for another
awed look into the abyss, they rode along, parallel with the
stupendous rift, to the place selected for the new camp. As Gowan had
brought up the tent in one of the first packs, the ladies pitched it
on the level top of the ridge.
"This is real camping!" delightedly exclaimed Genevieve, as they set
to gathering leafy twigs for bedding and dry branches for fuel. "How I
wish we could stay all night!"
"We can, if you wish," replied Isobel.
"Can we, really?"
"Our men often sleep out in the open, this time of year. We shall take
the tent for ourselves. Won't it be fun! But will Thomas be all
right?"
"I can manage with what I have until tomorrow afternoon."
"How long do you think they will be down in the canyon?" the girl
inquired.
Genevieve shuddered. "I wish I could tell! If only Tom finds that he
cannot get down at all, how thankful I shall be!"
"And--Lafe!" murmured the girl.
"It is possible that they may be unable to do it in one day," went on
Genevieve apprehensively--"Down, down into those dreadful depths, and
then along the river, all the way to where the tunnel is to be, and
back again, and then up the awful cliffs! Surely they cannot finish in
one day! Of course they will succeed--Tom can do anything, _anything_!
Yet how I dread the very thought--!"
"We must prepare to stay right here on High Mesa until they do
finish!" declared Isobel. "It will be impossible to go back to the
ranch tomorrow if they are still in that frightful place! Kid will
have to take the hawsses down to the waterhole. He shall go on home,
and tomorrow morning fetch us cream and eggs and everything you need.
They will have to be told at the ranch; and if Daddy has returned, he
will come up to help and be with us."
"You dear girl! The more I think of this terrible descent, the more I
dread it. I feel a presentiment that--But I must try to be brave and
not interfere with Tom's work! It will be a great comfort to have your
father with us."
"Daddy will surely come if he has returned. Isn't he kind and good? He
couldn't have done more to make me happy if he had been my own real
father!"
Genevieve smiled into the girl's glowing face. "Yes, dear. Yet I am
far from surprised, since _you_ are the daughter he wished to make
happy. I was more surprised to have him tell me you were adopted. You
have never said a word about it."
"I--you see, I did not happen to," confusedly murmured the girl.
"Chuckie Knowles is not your real name," Genevieve gently reproached
her.
"No, it is the pet name Daddy gave me. My real one is--Isobel."
"Isobel--?"
"Yes. Daddy's sister, in Denver, always calls me that. But here on the
ranch--"
"Isobel--?" repeated Genevieve, with a rising inflection.
The color ebbed from the girl's face, but she answered steadily:
"Chuckie--Isobel--Knowles. I am Daddy's daughter. I have no other
father."
"Is-o-bel--Is-o-bel," Genevieve intoned the name musically. "It has a
beautiful sound. I had a friend at school--Isabella--but we always
called her Belle."
The girl suddenly faced away from her companion, and darted to meet
Blake and Ashton, who were bringing the line of levels up over the
ridge.