CHAPTER XXIX
THE CLIMBER
A day of anxiety, only partly relieved by those tiny flashes of lightso far, far down in the awful depths; then the long night of ceaselesswatching. Neither Genevieve nor Isobel had been able to sleep duringthose hours when no flash signaled up to them from the abysmaldarkness.
Then at last, a full hour after dawn on the mesa top, the down-peeringwife had caught the flash that told of the renewal of the exploration.As throughout the previous day, Gowan brought the ladies food andwhatever else they needed. Only the needs of the baby had power todraw its mother away from the canyon edge. Isobel moved always alongthe giddy verge wherever she could cling to it, following the unseenworkers in the depths.
On his first trip to the ranch, the puncher had brought Genevieve'sfield glasses--an absurdly small instrument of remarkable power. Threetimes the first day and twice the second morning she and Isobel hadthe joy of seeing their loved ones creeping along the abyss bottom atplaces where the sun pierced down through the gloom. They missedother chances because the canyon edge was not everywhere so easilyapproachable.
Many times the flash of Blake's revolver passed unseen by them.Sometimes they had been forced away from the brink; sometimes thedepths were cut off from their view by juttings of the vast walls. Yetnow and again one or the other caught a flash that marked the advanceof the explorers.
Towards midday a last flash was seen by both above the turn where thecanyon curved to run towards Dry Fork Gulch. Between this point and thesharp bend opposite the gulch the precipices overhung the canyonbottom. Carrying the baby, the two hastened to the bend, to heap upand light a great beacon fire of green wood.
Gowan followed with the ponies, cool, silent and efficient. From thefirst he had seldom looked over into the canyon. His part was to serveMiss Chuckie and her friend, and wait. Like Ashton, he had failed tosurmise the real significance of that tender parting between Blake andIsobel. His look had betrayed boundless amazement when he saw the wifeof the man take the sobbing girl into her arms and comfort her. But hehad spoken no word of inquiry; and every moment since, both ladies hadbeen too utterly absorbed in their watch to talk to him of anythingelse.
At last the exploration was nearing the turning point. Genevieve andIsobel lay on the edge of the precipice near the beacon fire, peeringdown for the flash that would tell of the last rod reading.
Slowly the minutes dragged by, and no welcome signal flashed throughthe dark shadows. The usual interval between shots had passed. Stillno signal. They waited and watched, with fast-mounting apprehension.Could the brave ones down in those fearsome depths have failed almostin sight of the goal? or could misfortune have overtaken them in thatnarrow, cavernous reach of the chasm so close to their objectivepoint?
At last--"There! there it is!"
Together the two watchers saw the flash, and together they shriekedthe glad discovery.
Genevieve rose to go to her crying baby. Before she could silence him,Isobel screamed to her: "Another shot!--farther downstream! What canit mean?"
Genevieve put down the still-sobbing baby and ran again to the vergeof the precipice. Two minutes after the second flash there came athird, a few yards still farther along the canyon.
"They have changed their plans. They are going downstream," saidGenevieve.
She caught up the long pole of the flag and ran to thrust it outopposite the point where she had seen the flash.
Gowan was preparing for the return trip up along the canyon to thestarting point. At Isobel's call, he silently turned the ponies aboutthe other way and followed the excited watchers. As he did so, thegirl perceived a fourth flash in the abyss, a hundred yards fartherdownstream. She hastened with the flag to a point a little beyond theplace.
When Genevieve had quieted the baby and overtaken Isobel, the latterwas ready with a question: "You know Tom so well. Why is he going ondown? He said that he would at once return after reaching the placewhere the head of the tunnel is to be."
"He must have seen the beacon," replied Genevieve. "He could not havemistaken that. Something has forced him to change his plans. It may bethey were swept down some place in the river that he knows they cannotre-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 nobreak 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 glancedabout at Gowan. "It is just this side of where more than five thousandsheep were driven over into the canyon. That was four years ago. Ihave never since been able to go near the place."
"Tom said that he rode all along the canyon for miles. You say it maybe possible to climb up at that place. He must have seen it, and hehas remembered it."
"Then you think--?"
"I know that if it is possible for anyone to climb the wall, Tom willclimb 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 isall."
"Another flash!" cried Isobel. "So soon, yet all that long way fromthe last! They are traveling far faster!"
"Yes, they have finished with the levels," divined Genevieve. "We musthasten."
Isobel called the news to the silent puncher, and all moved along toovertake the hurrying fugitives below. Though both parties went somuch faster, Blake's frequent shots kept the anxious watchers above incloser touch than at any time before.
At last they came to that Cyclopean ladder of precipices, rising oneabove the other in narrow steps, and all inclined at a giddy pitch farsteeper than any house roof. Yet for a long way down them the fieldglasses showed their surfaces wrinkled with shelves and projectingledges and creased with faults and crevices.
The party went past this semi-break in the sheer wall, and halted onthe out-jutting point of the rim where the luckless flock of sheep hadbeen driven over to destruction. No reference was made to thatruthless slaughter of innocents. Gowan calmly set about preparing acamp. The ladies lay down to watch in the shade of a frost-crackedrock on the verge of the wall.
Already the time had come and gone for the regular signal of therevolver shot. The watchers began to grow apprehensive. Still theirstraining eyes saw no flash in the depths. A half hour passed. Theirapprehension deepened to dread. An hour--they were white with terror.
Suddenly a tiny red spot appeared--not a flash that came and went likelightning, 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 innerend of the pole she wedged in a crevice of the split rock.
"They have stopped to rest," she said. "It may be that Lafayette isworn 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 itfixedly. Soon another figure appeared in the circle of firelight. Itbent 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 badlystrained.--Oh! will your father never come?"
"Tom hurt? It can't be--no, no!" protested Isobel. But she too lookedand 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 thefoot 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 flametraveled across the canyon to a point beneath them. Soon the red spotof a new fire glowed in the shadows so directly under them that apebble dropped from their fingers must have grazed down the precipicesand 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 togo to her baby.
"It is Tom alone," she said, divining the truth. "Lafayette has helpedhim to the best place they could find, and now he is coming up to usfor help."
When she had fed the baby and soothed him to sleep, she laid outbandages and salve, set a full coffeepot on the fire started by Gowan,and examined the cream and eggs brought back by the puncher on hissecond night trip to the ranch.
Nearly an hour had passed when Isobel called in joyous excitement: "Isee 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 lostbefore she could locate the tiny figure creeping up that stairway ofthe giants. But, once she had fixed the glasses upon him, she couldsee him clearly. Isobel had well expressed it when she said that hewas climbing swiftly and bravely. Running along shelves, clamberingledges, following up the crevices that offered the best foothold, thetattered climber fought his dizzy way upwards, upwards, ever upwards!
Rarely, after some particularly hard scramble, he flung himself downon a shelf or on one of the steps of the Titanic ladder, to rest andsummon energy for another upward rush. His good fortune seemed asmarvelous as his endurance and daring. He never once slipped and neveronce had to turn back from an ascent. As if guided by instinct ordivine intuition, he chose always the safest, the least difficult, themost continuously scalable way on all that perilous pitch.
So swift an ascent was beyond the ordinary powers of man. It couldhave been made only by a maniac or by one to whom great passion hadgiven command of those latent forces of the body that enable themaniac to fling strong men about like children. Long before theclimber reached the top of that terrible ladder, his hands were tornand bleeding, the tattered garments were half rent from his limbs andbody, his eyes were sunk deep in their sockets.
Yet ever he climbed, ledge above ledge, crevice after crevice, untilat last only one steep pitch rose above him. A rope came sliding downthe rock. A voice--the sweetest voice in all the wide world ofsunshine and life--called to him. It sounded very far away, fartherthan the bounds of reality, yet he heard and obeyed. He slipped theloop of the rope down over his shoulders and about his heavingforebody. Then suddenly his labor was lightened. His leaden bodybecame winged. It floated upwards.
When he came to himself, a bitter refreshing wetness was soothing hisparched mouth and black swollen tongue; gentle fingers were spreadingbalm on his torn hands; the loveliest face of earth or heaven wasdownbent over him, its tender blue eyes brimming with tears ofcompassion and love. Softly his head and shoulders were raised, andhot coffee was poured down his throat as fast as he could swallow.
He half roused from his daze. The swollen, cracked lips moved infaintly muttered words: "Leg broken--sends love--doing fine--projectfeasible--irrigation--no food--must rest--go down again."
The eyes of the two ministering angels met. Genevieve bent down andpressed her lips to the purple, swollen-veined forehead. The heavylids closed over the sunken eyes; but before he lapsed into the torpidsleep of exhaustion that fell upon him, the two succeeded in feedinghim several spoonfuls of raw egg beaten in cream. He then sank intoutter unconsciousness.
Flaccid and inert as a corpse, he lay outstretched on the grassy slopewhile they bound up the cuts and bruises on his naked arms andshoulders and cut the broken, gaping boots from his bruised feet. Hislegs, doubly protected by the tough leather chapareras and thickriding leggins, had fared less cruelly than his arms, but his kneeswere raw and bleeding where the chaps had worn through on the rocks.