Out of the Depths: A Romance of Reclamation

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

  Ashton again turned his face to the rock and groaned. God had answeredhis prayer. Now must he pay the price. If only he could force himselfto lie still while the rising waters brimmed up over the ledge and upover his head and face. He was tired--tired! It would be so peacefulto lie and rest under the quiet waters.

  But the first ripple that crept over the surface of the shelf broughthim to his feet with the chill of its icy touch. He climbed to a shelfhigher up and again stretched himself full length on the rock. To liestill and rest was heavenly.... It was too good to last. The watercrept after him up the ledge. This time he could climb no higher.

  He sat erect and waited, still resting, until the flood rose to hischin. Then he stood up, leaning on the battered level rod. The waterrose after him, creeping with relentless stealth from his thigh to hiswaist, from his waist to his chest. It would soon be lapping at histhroat, and then--he must begin to swim. Life was far stronger withinhim than he had thought. His strength had come back. Blake was right.A man should fight. He should hold fast to hope, and fight to the verylast.

  Something swept from side to side along the face of the cliff abovehim. It tapped the rock close over his head. He looked up and saw arope. He could not see over the rounded brink of the cliff, but he hadno need. There was a rescuer above him who knew his desperatesituation. Could it be Blake? Surely not! He must have perished in thefrightful vortex of the tunnel.

  The rope swung lower. Now it was within reach. Ashton made a clutch asit swept over him and caught its end. He gave a tug. At once the lineslackened down to him. He felt something in his palm, twisted betweenthe rope strands. He looked and saw that it was a piece of foldedpaper. He opened it and found written a terse sentence in Blake's boldclear hand:

  Tie rod to line and climb.

  Why should he tie the splintered level rod to the rope? Of whatpossible use could it be in climbing the precipices? But even whileAshton asked himself the questions he obeyed Blake's directions. Thewater lapped up over his chin as he tied the knot. He pulled heavilyon the rope. It gave a little way, and then tautened. He reached upand began to climb, hand over hand, with desperate speed.

  Another desperate clutch at the rope--still another]

  Thirty feet above the water his strength was almost outspent, but hestruggled to raise himself one more time, and then another. To pausemeant to slip back and perish. Another upward heave. The rope herebent in over the rounding cliff. Hardly could he force his fingersbetween it and the rock. Yet if only he could get his knee up on thesharp slope! He heaved again, his face purple with exertion, the veinsswelling out on his forehead as if about to burst.

  At last! his knee was up and braced against the rock. Anotherdesperate clutch at the rope--another heave--still another. The cliffedge was rounding back. Every upward hitch was easier than the onebefore. Now he was scrambling up on toes and knees; now he could riseto his feet.

  The line led across a waterworn ledge and downward. Ashton peeredover, and saw the senseless body of Blake wedged against the otherside of the ledge. About it, close below the arms, the line wasknotted fast.

  Ashton stared wonderingly at the still, white face of the unconsciousman. It was covered with cold sweat. A peculiar twist in the sprawlingleft leg caught his attention. He looked--and understood. Panting withexertion, he staggered down the ledges of the lower side of thebarrier to where the river burst furiously out of the mouth of thetunnel.

  Hurled by that mad torrent from the darkness of the gorged cavernstraight upon a line of rocks, all Blake's strength and quickness hadnot enabled him to save himself from injury. Yet he had crept up thoserough ledges, dragging his shattered leg. Atrocious as must have beenhis agony, he had crept all the way to the top, had written the note,and flung down the rope to rescue his companion.

  There was no vessel in which Ashton could carry water. He had no hat,his boots were full of holes, he must use his hands in scrambling backup the ledges. He stripped off his tattered flannel shirt, dipped itin a swirling eddy, and started back as fast as he could climb.

  Blake still lay unconscious. Ashton straightened out the twisted leg,and knelt to bathe the big white face with an end of the drippinggarment. After a time the eyelids of the prostrate man fluttered andlifted, and the pale blue eyes stared upward with returningconsciousness.

  "I'm here!" cried Ashton. "Do you see? You saved me!"

  "Colt's gone," muttered Blake. "But cartridges--fire."

  "You mean, fire the cartridges to let them know where we are? How canI do it without the revolver?"

  "No, build a fire," replied the engineer. He raised a heavy hand topoint towards the high end of the barrier. "Driftwood up there. Bringit down. I'll light it."

  "Light it--how?" asked Ashton incredulously.

  "Get it," ordered Blake.

  Ashton hurried across the crest of the barrier to where it sloped upand merged in the precipice foot. The mass of rock that formed thebarrier had fallen out of the face of the lower part of the canyonwall, leaving a great hollow in the rock. But above the hollow theupper precipices beetled out and rose sheer, on up the dizzy heightsto the verge of the chasm. Contrasted with this awesome underminedwall, the broken, steeple-sloped precipices adjoining it on theupstream side looked hopefully scalable to Ashton. He marked out aline of shelves and crevices running far up to where the full sunlightsmiled on the rock.

  But Blake had told him to fetch wood for a fire, that they mightsignal the watchers on the heights. He hastened up over the rocks tothe heaps of logs and branches stranded on the high end of the barrierby the freshets. Every year the river, swollen by the spring rains,brimmed over the top of this natural dam.

  Yet not all the heaps lying on the ledges were driftwood. As Ashtonapproached, he was horrified to see that the largest and highestsituated piles were nothing else than masses of bones. Drawn by agruesome fascination, he climbed up to the nearest of the ghastlyheaps. The loose ribs and vertebrae scattered down the slope seemed tohim the size of human ribs and vertebrae. He shuddered as they crunchedunder his tread.

  Then he saw a skull with spiral-curved horns. He looked up the canyonwall, and understood. The high-heaped bones were the skeletons ofsheep. In a flash, he remembered Isobel's account of Gowan, that firstday up there on the top of the mesa. Not only had the puncher killedsix men; he had, together with other violent men of the cattle ranges,driven thousands of sheep over into the canyon--and this was theplace.

  Sick with horror and loathing, Ashton ran to snatch up an armful ofthe smaller driftwood and hurry back down to the center of thebarrier. He found Blake lying white and still. But beside him werethree cartridges from which the bullets had been worked out. At theterse command of the engineer, Ashton ground one of the older anddrier pieces of wood to minute fragments on a rock.

  Blake emptied the powder from one of the cartridges into the littlepile of splinters, and holding the edge of another shell against acorner of the rock, tapped the cap with a stone. At the fifth strokethe cap exploded. The loosened powder of the cartridge flared out intothe powder-sprinkled tinder. Soon a fire of the dry, half-rotteddriftwood was blazing bright and almost smokeless in the twilight ofthe depths.

  "Now haul up the rod," directed Blake, and he lay back to bask in thegrateful warmth.

  Ashton drew up the level rod and came back over the ledge. He foundthat the engineer had freed himself from the last coils of the ropeand was unraveling the end that had been next his body. But his eyeswere upturned to the heights.

  "Look--the flag!" he said.

  "Already?" exclaimed Ashton.

  "Yes. No doubt one of them has been waiting on that out-juttingpoint.--Now, if you'll break the rod. We've got to get my leg intosplints."

  The crude splints were soon ready. For bandages there were strips fromthe tattered shirts of both men. Unraveled rope-strands, burnt off inthe fire, served to lash all together. Beads of cold sweat gathe
redand rolled down Blake's white face throughout the cruel operation. Yethe endured every twist and pull of the broken limb without a groan.When at last the bones were set to his satisfaction and the leg lashedrigid to the splints, he even mustered a faint smile.

  "That beats an amputation," he declared. "Now if you can help me upunder the cliff, where you can plant the fire against a back-log--Iwant to dry out and do some planning while you're climbing up forhelp. I've an idea we can put in a dynamo down here, with turbines inthe intake and in the mouth of the tunnel--carry a wire up over thetop of the mesa and down into the gulch. Understand? All the electricpower we want to drive the tunnel, and very cheap."

  "My God!" gasped Ashton. "You can lie here--here--maimed, alreadystarving--and can plan like that?"

  "Why not? No fun thinking of my leg, is it? As for the rest, you'regoing up to report the situation. They'll soon manage to yank me outof this blessed hole."

  Ashton's face darkened. "But that's the question," he rejoined. "Am Igoing to go up? Am I going to try to go up?"

  Blake looked at him with a steady, unflinching gaze. "There'ssomething queer about all this. Isn't it time you explained? When therope came off that last cliff in the gorge and I saw that you haduntied it before sliding down, I thought you were off your head. Andtwo or three times today, too. But since we landed here--"

  "Your broken leg," interrupted Ashton--"it made me forget. You hadsaved me with the rope. I had to help you. Now I see how foolish Ihave been. I should have left you to lie here, and flung myself backover into the water."

  "Why?" calmly queried Blake.

  "Why! You ask why?" cried Ashton, his eyes ablaze with excitement, hiswhole body quivering. "Can't you see? Are you blind? What do I careabout myself if I can save her from you? I shall not try to escape.You shall never go up there to work her harm!"

  "Harm her? You mean put through this irrigation project?"

  "No!" shouted Ashton. "Don't lie and pretend, you hypocrite! You knowwhat I mean! You know she could not hide how you were enticing her!"

  Blake stared in utter astonishment. Then, regardless of his leg, hesat up and said quietly: "I see. I thought you must have understoodwhen she told me, there at the last moment before we started. She ismy sister."

  "Sister!" scoffed Ashton. "You liar! You have no sister. Your sistersdied years ago. Genevieve told me."

  "That was what I told her. I believed it true. But it was not true.Belle did not die--God! when I think of that! It has helped me throughthis fight--it helped me crawl up here with that leg dangling. GoodGod! To think of Jenny waiting for me up there, and Son, and littleBelle too--little Belle whom all these years I thought dead!"

  Ashton stood as if turned to stone. "Belle--you call her Belle? Shetold me--Chuckie only a nickname!" he stammered. "Adopted--her realname Isobel!"

  "We always called her Belle--Baby Belle! She was the youngest," saidBlake.

  "But why--why did you not--tell me?"

  "I did not know. She did--she knew from the first, there atStockchute. I see it now. Even before that, she must have guessed it.Yes, I see all now. She sent for me to come out here, because shethought I might be her brother."

  "You did not tell me!" reproached Ashton, his face ghastly. "How was Ito know?"

  "I tell you, I did not know," repeated Blake. "At first--yes, allalong--there was something about her voice and face--But she hadchanged so much, and all these years--eight, nine years--I had thoughther dead. She gave me no sign--only that friendliness. I did not knowuntil the very last moment, there on the edge of the ravine. I thoughtyou saw it; that you heard her tell me. It seemed to me everybody musthave heard."

  "I was running away--I could not bear it. I think I must have beencrazy for a time. If only I had heard! My God! if only I had heard!"

  "Well, you know now," said Blake. "What's done is done. The questionnow is, what are you going to do next?"

  Instantly Ashton's drooping figure was a-quiver with eagerness.

  "You wish first to be taken up near the driftwood," he exclaimed."Let me lift you. Don't be afraid to put your weight on me. Hurry! Wemust lose no time!"

  Blake was already struggling up. Ashton strained to help him riseerect on his sound leg. Braced and half lifted by the younger man, theengineer hobbled and hopped along the barrier crest and up its slopingside. His trained eye picked out a great weather-seasoned pine loglying directly beneath the outermost point of the canyon rim. An objectdropped over where the flag still flecked against the indigo sky,would have fallen straight down to the log, unless deflected by theprong of a ledge that jutted out twelve hundred feet from the top.

  "Here," panted Blake, regardless of the great pile of skeletons heapedon the far end of the log. "This place--right below them! Goback--bring fire and rope."

  Ashton ran back to fetch the rope and a dozen blazing sticks.Driftwood was strewn all around. In a minute he had a fire startedagainst the butt end of the log. He began to gather a pile of fuel.But Blake checked him with a cheerful--"That's enough, old man. I canmanage now. Take the rope, and go."

  When Ashton had coiled the rope over his shoulder and under theopposite arm, he came and stood before his prostrate companion. Hisface was scarlet with shame.

  "I have been a fool--and worse," he said. "I doubted her. I am utterlyunfit to live. If I were alone down here, I would stay and rot. Butyou are her brother. If it is possible to get up there, I am goingup."

  "You are going up!" encouraged Blake. "You will make it. Give my loveto them. Tell them I'm doing fine."

  He held out his hand.

  "No," said Ashton. "I'd give anything if I could grip hands with you.But I cannot. You are her brother. I am unfit to touch your hand."

  He turned and ran up the precipice-foot to the first steep ascent ofthe steeple-sloped break in the wall of the abyss.