I guess Harry was good and scared. I know I was. He just said, “You kids
wait here, I’ll be back.”
He got out and went along the road and we watched him in the glare of
the lights and didn’t say anything to each other. I remember how Harry
looked in the light—kind of as if he were covered with dust. We could
hear him calling Pee-wee, but we couldn’t hear any answer. His voice
sounded funny like, because we were so kind of excited, and it was so
still all about. Away far off I could hear a train whistle.
Grove said, “What do you think that sound like a branch breaking was?”
“How do _I_ know?” I said. “Shh!”
“Shall we wake up the kid?” he asked me; “it makes me feel kind—oh, I
don’t know—to hear him breathing.”
“Let the kid sleep,” I said.
Harry was gone out of sight now, and neither one of us spoke, just sat
there, waiting. It kind of hurt me to breathe. Pretty soon he came back,
walking straight along and not calling to us at all.
“There’s something the matter,” Grove said.
When Harry got to the car he said, awful short and funny sort of, “Get
those tools out, Roy, quick. I’m afraid to take the car any farther than
this in the dark. Get the storage battery out, Grove—come on, _quick_! I
want to see if I can’t throw a light down the cliff up yonder.”
“Where’s Pee-wee?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said; “he isn’t up there. Quick!”
We loosened the connections as fast as we could and took the battery and
one of the headlights and everything we needed, and followed Harry along
the road. “Keep close behind me,” he said, “and step just where I step.
Got the pincers?”
I was breathing kind of hard on account of there being a kind of lump in
my throat, but I said, “Yop.”
“And the extra wiring?”
“I’ve got it,” Grove said.
He didn’t say anything more, and we kind of didn’t dare to speak to him.
Pretty soon we came to a place where there was a part of the cliff
broken away outside the fence, and Harry sat down on a rock and started
connecting up the light.
“I don’t know if this blamed thing is going to work,” he said.
“If—if he should be down there,” Grove said; “could he be alive?”
Harry didn’t answer at all, he was so busy and worried.
“I can climb down,” I said, “if he’s there. He—he did me many a good
turn, that’s one thing.”
“I can see him now, the way he was talking to Mrs. West,” Grove said.
“Here, stand this battery out of the way,” Harry said. “Look out you
don’t trip over the wire. You boys keep back.”
“I’m not going to keep back,” I told him; “I want to see. If he’s down
there, I’m going down. I know that. Who’s—who’s got a—a better right to
know than we have——”
Harry didn’t say anything. It was only just that he was so worried and
excited himself that he didn’t want us near the edge. He held the
headlight down over the edge of the cliff and we could see a jumble of
trees and rocks down there—away far down. Everything looked kind of
gray.
“Look between those two rocks,” Harry said, awful quiet. His voice
sounded funny and different. Grove just crept back and then stood up and
I could hear him gulping there in the dark.
“It’s—it’s him,” I said to Harry.
“I was afraid of it,” Harry said. That was all he said. But I could see
how the light moved and I knew he wasn’t holding it steady. Pee-wee was
wedged in between two rocks away down far below us. There couldn’t be
any mistake about it, because we could see his khaki suit plain.
“I’m going down,” I said; “maybe—maybe I jollied him a lot, but he was a
scout—he was—I’m going down——” That’s just what I said.
Harry shook his head and just said, “It’s all over, Roy. This is
terrible.”
“I’m going down anyway,” I said.