THE CLIMBER
A day of anxiety, only partly relieved by those tiny flashes of light
so far, far down in the awful depths; then the long night of ceaseless
watching. Neither Genevieve nor Isobel had been able to sleep during
those hours when no flash signaled up to them from the abysmal
darkness.
Then at last, a full hour after dawn on the mesa top, the down-peering
wife had caught the flash that told of the renewal of the exploration.
As throughout the previous day, Gowan brought the ladies food and
whatever else they needed. Only the needs of the baby had power to
draw its mother away from the canyon edge. Isobel moved always along
the giddy verge wherever she could cling to it, following the unseen
workers in the depths.
On his first trip to the ranch, the puncher had brought Genevieve's
field glasses--an absurdly small instrument of remarkable power. Three
times the first day and twice the second morning she and Isobel had
the joy of seeing their loved ones creeping along the abyss bottom at
places where the sun pierced down through the gloom. They missed
other chances because the canyon edge was not everywhere so easily
approachable.
Many times the flash of Blake's revolver passed unseen by them.
Sometimes they had been forced away from the brink; sometimes the
depths were cut off from their view by juttings of the vast walls. Yet
now and again one or the other caught a flash that marked the advance
of the explorers.
Towards midday a last flash was seen by both above the turn where the
canyon curved to run towards Dry Fork Gulch. Between this point and the
sharp bend opposite the gulch the precipices overhung the canyon
bottom. Carrying the baby, the two hastened to the bend, to heap up
and light a great beacon fire of green wood.
Gowan followed with the ponies, cool, silent and efficient. From the
first he had seldom looked over into the canyon. His part was to serve
Miss Chuckie and her friend, and wait. Like Ashton, he had failed to
surmise the real significance of that tender parting between Blake and
Isobel. His look had betrayed boundless amazement when he saw the wife
of the man take the sobbing girl into her arms and comfort her. But he
had spoken no word of inquiry; and every moment since, both ladies had
been too utterly absorbed in their watch to talk to him of anything
else.
At last the exploration was nearing the turning point. Genevieve and
Isobel lay on the edge of the precipice near the beacon fire, peering
down for the flash that would tell of the last rod reading.
Slowly the minutes dragged by, and no welcome signal flashed through
the dark shadows. The usual interval between shots had passed. Still
no signal. They waited and watched, with fast-mounting apprehension.
Could the brave ones down in those fearsome depths have failed almost
in sight of the goal? or could misfortune have overtaken them in that
narrow, cavernous reach of the chasm so close to their objective
point?
At last--"There! there it is!"
Together the two watchers saw the flash, and together they shrieked
the glad discovery.
Genevieve rose to go to her crying baby. Before she could silence him,
Isobel screamed to her: "Another shot!--farther downstream! What can
it mean?"
Genevieve put down the still-sobbing baby and ran again to the verge
of the precipice. Two minutes after the second flash there came a
third, a few yards still farther along the canyon.
"They have changed their plans. They are going downstream," said
Genevieve.
She caught up the long pole of the flag and ran to thrust it out
opposite the point where she had seen the flash.
Gowan was preparing for the return trip up along the canyon to the
starting point. At Isobel's call, he silently turned the ponies about
the other way and followed the excited watchers. As he did so, the
girl perceived a fourth flash in the abyss, a hundred yards farther
downstream. She hastened with the flag to a point a little beyond the
place.
When Genevieve had quieted the baby and overtaken Isobel, the latter
was ready with a question: "You know Tom so well. Why is he going on
down? He said that he would at once return after reaching the place
where the head of the tunnel is to be."
"He must have seen the beacon," replied Genevieve. "He could not have
mistaken that. Something has forced him to change his plans. It may be
they were swept down some place in the river that he knows they cannot
re-ascend."
"Oh! do not say it!" sobbed the girl. "If they cannot get back--oh!
what will they do? How will they ever escape?"
"Is there no other place?" asked Genevieve. "Think, dear. Is there no
break in these terrible precipices?"
"There's a place where the wall slopes back--but steep, oh, so steep!
Yet it is barely possible--" The girl's voice sank, and she glanced
about at Gowan. "It is just this side of where more than five thousand
sheep were driven over into the canyon. That was four years ago. I
have never since been able to go near the place."
"Tom said that he rode all along the canyon for miles. You say it may
be possible to climb up at that place. He must have seen it, and he
has remembered it."
"Then you think--?"
"I know that if it is possible for anyone to climb the wall, Tom will
climb it--and he will bring up Lafayette with him."
"Dear Genevieve! You are so strong! so full of hope!"
"Not hope, dear. It is trust. I know Tom better than you. That is
all."
"Another flash!" cried Isobel. "So soon, yet all that long way from
the last! They are traveling far faster!"
"Yes, they have finished with the levels," divined Genevieve. "We must
hasten."
Isobel called the news to the silent puncher, and all moved along to
overtake the hurrying fugitives below. Though both parties went so
much faster, Blake's frequent shots kept the anxious watchers above in
closer touch than at any time before.
At last they came to that Cyclopean ladder of precipices, rising one
above the other in narrow steps, and all inclined at a giddy pitch far
steeper than any house roof. Yet for a long way down them the field
glasses showed their surfaces wrinkled with shelves and projecting
ledges and creased with faults and crevices.
The party went past this semi-break in the sheer wall, and halted on
the out-jutting point of the rim where the luckless flock of sheep had
been driven over to destruction. No reference was made to that
ruthless slaughter of innocents. Gowan calmly set about preparing a
camp. The ladies lay down to watch in the shade of a frost-cracked
rock on the verge of the wall.
Already the time had come and gone for the regular signal of the
revolver shot. The watchers began to grow apprehensive. Still their
straining eyes saw no flash in the depths. A half hour passed. Their
apprehension deepened to dread. An hour--they were white with terror.
Suddenly a tiny red spot appeared--not a flash that came and went like
lightning, but a flame that remained and grew larger.
"A fire!" cried Isobel. "They have halted and built a fire."
Genevieve brought the flag and thrust it out over the edge. The inner
end of the pole she wedged in a crevice of the split rock.
"They have stopped to rest," she said. "It may be that Lafayette is
worn out. But soon I trust they will be coming up."
She looked through her glasses. The fire was burning its brightest.
She discerned the prostrate figure beside the ledge. She watched it
fixedly. Soon another figure appeared in the circle of firelight. It
bent over the first, doing something with pieces of stick.
"Look," whispered Genevieve, handing the glasses to her companion,
"Tom is hurt. Lafayette is binding his leg. It is broken or badly
strained.--Oh! will your father never come?"
"Tom hurt? It can't be--no, no!" protested Isobel. But she too looked
and saw. After a time she added breathlessly: "It can't be so bad!
Lafe is helping him to rise.... They are starting this way--to the
foot of the wall! They will be climbing up!"
"But if his leg is injured!" differed Genevieve.
Again they waited. Presently the fire scattered, and a streak of flame
traveled across the canyon to a point beneath them. Soon the red spot
of a new fire glowed in the shadows so directly under them that a
pebble dropped from their fingers must have grazed down the precipices
and fallen into the flames.
After several minutes of alternate peering through the glasses,
Genevieve handed them back to Isobel for the third time, and rose to
go to her baby.
"It is Tom alone," she said, divining the truth. "Lafayette has helped
him to the best place they could find, and now he is coming up to us
for help."
When she had fed the baby and soothed him to sleep, she laid out
bandages and salve, set a full coffeepot on the fire started by Gowan,
and examined the cream and eggs brought back by the puncher on his
second night trip to the ranch.
Nearly an hour had passed when Isobel called in joyous excitement: "I
see him! I see him! Down there where the sunlight slants on the rocks.
Oh! how bravely! how swiftly he climbs!"
Genevieve went to take the glasses and look. Several moments were lost
before she could locate the tiny figure creeping up that stairway of
the giants. But, once she had fixed the glasses upon him, she could
see him clearly. Isobel had well expressed it when she said that he
was climbing swiftly and bravely. Running along shelves, clambering
ledges, following up the crevices that offered the best foothold, the
tattered climber fought his dizzy way upwards, upwards, ever upwards!
Rarely, after some particularly hard scramble, he flung himself down
on a shelf or on one of the steps of the Titanic ladder, to rest and
summon energy for another upward rush. His good fortune seemed as
marvelous as his endurance and daring. He never once slipped and never
once had to turn back from an ascent. As if guided by instinct or
divine intuition, he chose always the safest, the least difficult, the
most continuously scalable way on all that perilous pitch.
So swift an ascent was beyond the ordinary powers of man. It could
have been made only by a maniac or by one to whom great passion had
given command of those latent forces of the body that enable the
maniac to fling strong men about like children. Long before the
climber reached the top of that terrible ladder, his hands were torn
and bleeding, the tattered garments were half rent from his limbs and
body, his eyes were sunk deep in their sockets.
Yet ever he climbed, ledge above ledge, crevice after crevice, until
at last only one steep pitch rose above him. A rope came sliding down
the rock. A voice--the sweetest voice in all the wide world of
sunshine and life--called to him. It sounded very far away, farther
than the bounds of reality, yet he heard and obeyed. He slipped the
loop of the rope down over his shoulders and about his heaving
forebody. Then suddenly his labor was lightened. His leaden body
became winged. It floated upwards.
When he came to himself, a bitter refreshing wetness was soothing his
parched mouth and black swollen tongue; gentle fingers were spreading
balm on his torn hands; the loveliest face of earth or heaven was
downbent over him, its tender blue eyes brimming with tears of
compassion and love. Softly his head and shoulders were raised, and
hot coffee was poured down his throat as fast as he could swallow.
He half roused from his daze. The swollen, cracked lips moved in
faintly muttered words: "Leg broken--sends love--doing fine--project
feasible--irrigation--no food--must rest--go down again."
The eyes of the two ministering angels met. Genevieve bent down and
pressed her lips to the purple, swollen-veined forehead. The heavy
lids closed over the sunken eyes; but before he lapsed into the torpid
sleep of exhaustion that fell upon him, the two succeeded in feeding
him several spoonfuls of raw egg beaten in cream. He then sank into
utter unconsciousness.
Flaccid and inert as a corpse, he lay outstretched on the grassy slope
while they bound up the cuts and bruises on his naked arms and
shoulders and cut the broken, gaping boots from his bruised feet. His
legs, doubly protected by the tough leather chapareras and thick
riding leggins, had fared less cruelly than his arms, but his knees
were raw and bleeding where the chaps had worn through on the rocks.