OVER THE BRINK
Isobel came back to him, noiselessly gliding around through the
darkness. She set down the bundle she was carrying, and hung blankets
over the entrance of the little cave. She then lighted the lantern. He
held out his bound hands. She unbound them enough for him to use his
fingers, and taking the baby and the pistol, crouched down, with her
ear close to the screening blankets, while he exchanged his tattered
clothes for those she had brought to him.
There were also his change of boots and a pair of Blake's gauntlet
gloves, into which he was able to force his slender fingers without
removing the remaining bandages. Isobel had already bound up into a
kind of knapsack the food and clothing and first-aid package that he
was to take down to her injured brother. He slung it upon his back,
and whispered that he was ready.
She nestled the baby in the warm blankets on which he had lain,
wrapped a blanket about the lantern, and led him cautiously down to
the brink of the chasm. Dark as was the night about them, it was
bright compared with the intense blackness of that profound abyss.
The girl caught his arm and shrank back from the edge.
"You will not fall? you are certain you will not fall?" she
whispered.
"I cannot fall," he answered with calm conviction. "He needs me. I am
going down to him. Besides, it will be easier with the lantern than if
I could see below."
"Do not uncover the light until you are down over the edge.--Wait!"
She stooped to knot the rope that he had brought up from the depths,
to the lariats with which he had been dragged up the last ledges. She
looped the end about his waist.
"There," she said. "I shall at least be able to help you down the
first fifty yards."
"God bless you and keep you! Good-by!" he murmured in a choking voice,
and he hastily crept down to slip over the first ledge of that
night-shrouded Cyclopean ladder.
"Lafe!" she whispered. "Surely you do not mean to go without first
telling me--I cannot let you go until--If you should fall! Wait,
dearest! Kiss me--tell me that you--Oh, if you should fall!"
"I will not fall; I cannot. Good-by!"
The dim white blotch of his face disappeared below the verge. The line
jerked through the girl's hands. She clutched it with frantic
strength and flung herself back with her feet braced against a point
of rock. After a moment of tense straining, the rope slackened, and
his voice came up to her over the ledge: "Pay out, please. It's all
right. I've found a crevice."
She eased off on the line a few inches at a time, but always keeping
it taut and always holding herself braced for a sudden jerk. At last
the end came into her hand. She had to lie out on the rim-rock and
call down to him. He called back in a tone of quiet assurance. The
line slackened. He had cast it loose. The lantern glowed out in the
blackness and showed him standing on a narrow shelf.
As Isobel bent lower to gaze at him, a frightful scream rang out above
the booming of the canyon. It was a shriek such as a woman would utter
in mortal fear. The girl drew back from the verge, her hair stiffening
with horror. Could it be possible that Genevieve had lost her way and
was wandering back to camp, and that Gowan--
Again the fearful scream pierced the air. Isobel looked quickly across
towards the far side of the canyon. She could see nothing, but she drew
in a deep sigh of relief. The second cry had told her that it was only
a mountain lion, over on the other brink of the chasm.
When she again looked down at Ashton he was descending a crevice with
a rapidity that brought her heart into her mouth. Yet there was no
hurry in his quick movements, and every little while he paused on a
shelf to peer at the steep slope immediately below him. Soon the
circle of lantern light became smaller and dimmer to the anxious
watcher above. Steadily it waned until all she could see was a little
point of light far down in the darkness--and always it grew smaller
and fainter.
Lying there with her bosom pressed against the hard stone, her
straining eyes fixed on that lessening point of light, she had lost
all count of time. Her whole soul was in her eyes, watching, watching,
watching lest that tiny light should suddenly shoot down like a meteor
and vanish in the darkness. Many times it disappeared, but never in
swift downward flight, and always it reappeared.
Not until the moon came gliding up above the lofty white crests of the
snowy range did she think of aught else than that speck of light and
of him who was bearing it down into the black depths. But the glint of
moonlight on a crystalline stone broke her steadfast gaze. Before she
could again fix it on the faint point of lantern light a sound that
had been knocking at the threshold of her consciousness at last made
itself heard. It was an intermittent clinking as of steel on stone.
She looked around, thinking that one of the horses was walking along
the ridge slope with a loose shoe. But all were standing motionless in
the moonlight, dozing. Again she heard the click, and this time she
located the direction from which it came. She looked at the split rock
on the edge of the sheer drop. From beside it she had peered down
through the field glasses at the outstretched form of her brother, far
beneath in the canyon bottom.
The sound came from that rock. She stared at the side of the
frost-split fragment with dilated eyes. The crack between the loose
outer bowlder and the main mass showed very black and wide in the
moonlight. Could it be possible that it had widened--that it was
slipping over? And her brother down there beneath it!...
* * * * *
By setting wedge-shaped stones in the top of the cleft rock and prying
with the crowbar, Gowan had gradually canted the top of the loose
outer bowlder towards the edge of the precipice. It had only to topple
forward in order to plunge down the canyon wall. He was working as
silently as he could, but with a fierce eagerness that caused an
occasional slip of the crowbar on the rock.
Although the great block of stone weighed over two tons, its base was
small and rounded, and the mass behind it gave him leverage for his
bar. Every inch that he pried it forward, the stones slipped farther
down into the widening crack and held the vantage he had gained.
Already the bowlder had been pushed out at the top many inches. It
was almost balanced. The time had come to see if he could not pry it
over with a single heave.
He did not propose to fall over after the rock. He turned his face to
the brink, set the end of the bar in the crevice, and braced himself
to heave backwards on the outer end. He put his weight on it and
pulled. He could feel the rock give--the top was moving outward. A
little more, and it must topple over.
Close behind him spoke a voice so hoarse and low-pitched with horror
that it sounded like a man's--"Drop that bar! drop it!"
With the swiftness of a wolf, he bounded sideways along the rim-rock.
In the same lightning movement, he whirled face about and whipped his
Colt's from its holster. His finger was crooking against the trigger
before he saw who it was that confronted him. The hammer fell in the
same instant that he twitched the muzzle up and sideways. The heavy
bullet scorched the girl's cheek.
Above the crashing report rose a wild cry, "Miss Chuckie--God!"
Through the blinding, stinging powder-smoke she saw him stagger
backwards as if to flee from what he thought he had done. His foot
went down over the sharp edge. He flung up his hands and dropped into
the abyss.
She did not shriek. She could not. Her tongue clove to the roof of
her mouth. Her heart stopped beating. She crumpled down and lay
gasping. But the fascination of horror spurred her to struggle to her
knees and creep over to peer down from the place where he had fallen.
Beneath her was only blank, utter darkness. No sound came up out of
the deep except only that ceaseless reverberation of the hidden river.
Twelve hundred feet down, the falling man had struck glancingly upon
the smooth side of an out-jutting rock and his crushed body had been
flung far out and sideways. It plunged into the rapids below the
barrier and was borne away down the canyon. But this the girl could not
have seen even in midday.
She looked for the red star of the distant fire where she knew her
brother was lying. She could not see it. The point upon which the
falling man had struck shut off her view. The other side of the split
rock was where she and Genevieve had looked down through the glasses
and seen Blake. She failed to realize the difference in the change of
position. Her horror deepened. She thought that Gowan had hurled
straight down to the bottom with all the terrific velocity of that
sheer drop, and that he had plunged upon the fire and upon the dear
form outstretched beside it, to crush and mangle and be crushed and
mangled. The thought was too frightful for human endurance.
A long time she lay in a swoon, her head on the very edge of the
brink. It was the wailing of the hungry, frightened baby that at last
called her back to life and action. She dragged herself up around to
the hiding place. The neglected baby was not easy to quiet. The cream
had soured. There was nothing that she could give him except water.
All the eggs that were left she had put in the knapsack that Ashton
was carrying down to her brother. The baby now showed the full reflex
of his mother's long hours of anxiety and fear. He fretted and cried
and would not be comforted.
The chill of approaching dawn forced her to rebuild the outburnt fire.
The warm glow and the play of the flames diverted the child and hushed
his outcry. Holding him so that he might continue to watch the dancing
tongues of fire, the girl sat motionless, going over and over again in
her mind all that had occurred since the tattered, bleeding,
purple-faced climber had come straining up out of the depths.... It
could not have happened--it was all a hideous dream.... Would they
never come? Must she sit here forever--alone!