Blake could give all his thought to picking the best and quickest way through rapids and falls, over the water-washed rocks and along the side ledges. And he could give all his great strength to helping his companion past the hard places. In return Ashton gave such help as he could to the engineer, many times when a steadying hand or the outstretched rod rendered easier a descent or the fording of some swift mill race in the stream.

At the end of the first quarter-mile Blake had fired a shot, and again at the second quarter. After that he waited longer intervals. He considered it advisable to husband the few remaining cartridges.

The river was now rapidly rising. But every inch of added depth found the two fugitives much farther down the canon. In two hours they advanced thrice the distance that they had covered in the same time before noon, and this despite the increasing depth and force of the river.

The pace was so hot that Ashton was beginning to stumble and slip, but Blake kept by him and helped him along by word and deed. He a.s.serted and repeated a dozen times over, that they were nearing the place where an ascent of the precipices might be possible. At last they rounded a turn in the winding chasm, and Blake was able to point to a break in the sheer wall on the Dry Mesa side, where the precipices were set back one above the other in a Cyclopean stepladder and their steeply-pitched faces were rough with crevices and shelves.

"Look!" he cried. "There's the place--there's our ladder up from h.e.l.l to heaven!"

Ashton soon lowered his weary head. He stared dully downstream to where a fifty-foot cliff extended across from side to side of the canon like a dam.

"Part of the wall slid in," he stated with the simplicity of one who is nearing exhaustion.

"That shall be our bridge to the ladder," shouted Blake. "It's all sheer cliff along here at the foot of the break, but the ledges run down sideways to the top of the cross cliff. We shall soon be lying up there, high and dry, getting our second wind for the run up the ladder."

The engineer spoke confidently, and felt what he spoke. But as they struggled on down the turbulent stream to the cross cliff, the light left his face. From wall to wall of the canon the great ma.s.s of fallen rock stretched across the bottom in a sheer-faced barrier, broken only by a tunnel barely large enough to suck in the swelling volume of the river.

Blake came down close to the intake, scanning every foot of the cliff face for a scalable break or crevice. There was none to be found. He climbed along the cliff foot to a low shelf beside the roaring tunnel, and stood staring at the opening in deep thought. Even while he looked, the swelling volume of the river filled the tunnel to its roof. Blake peered at the fresh watermark twenty feet up the face of the cliff, and bent down beside Ashton, who had stretched out to rest on the shelf of rock.

"There's only one thing to it, old man," he said. "We must dive through that tunnel."

"Through that hole?" gasped Ashton. "No! I've done enough. I shall stay here."

"To drown like a rat in a rainwater barrel!" rejoined Blake. "Look at that watermark. The tunnel is now running full. Inside a quarter-hour the river will be up over this ledge. It will keep rising till it reaches that mark, and it will not fall until after low water."

"What do I care?" said Ashton hopelessly. "Go to the devil your own way. I'd rather drown here than in that underground hole. Leave me alone."

Blake considered a full half minute, looked up the cliff face, and replied: "Perhaps it's as well. I shall do the best I can. But first I want to tell you I've wiped out all that past affair. You are another person from that Lafayette Ashton. We stand here almost face to face with the Unknown. One or both of us may soon go out into the Darkness.

As we may never meet again, I wish to tell you that you have proved yourself, even more than I hoped when I saw you come rushing down the ravine to join me. You have proved yourself a man. Good-by."

He held out his hand. But Ashton turned his face to the wall of rock and was silent. After a time he heard the sound of Blake's worn heels on the outer end of the shelf. His ears, attuned to the ceaseless tumult of the waters, caught the click of the protruded heel-nail heads. There was a brief pause--then the plunge. He looked about quickly and saw Blake's hands vanish in the down-sucking eddy where the swollen waters drew into the now hidden intake of the tunnel.

A cry of horror burst from his heaving chest. Blake had gone--Blake the iron-limbed, iron-hearted man. He had conquered the river--and now the wild waters had seized him and were mauling and smashing and crushing him in the terrible mill of the cavern. Beyond that underground pa.s.sage, it might be miles away, the victor would fling up on some fanged rock a shapeless ma.s.s that once had been a man.

CHAPTER XXVIII

LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

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

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

He sat erect and waited, still resting, until the flood rose to his chin. Then he stood up, leaning on the battered level rod. The water rose after him, creeping with relentless stealth from his thigh to his waist, from his waist to his chest. It would soon be lapping at his throat, and then--he must begin to swim. Life was far stronger within him 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 very last.

Something swept from side to side along the face of the cliff above him. It tapped the rock close over his head. He looked up and saw a rope. He could not see over the rounded brink of the cliff, but he had no need. There was a rescuer above him who knew his desperate situation. Could it be Blake? Surely not! He must have perished in the frightful vortex of the tunnel.

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

Tie rod to line and climb.

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: Another desperate clutch at the rope--still another]

Thirty feet above the water his strength was almost outspent, but he struggled to raise himself one more time, and then another. To pause meant to slip back and perish. Another upward heave. The rope here bent in over the rounding cliff. Hardly could he force his fingers between it and the rock. Yet if only he could get his knee up on the sharp slope! He heaved again, his face purple with exertion, the veins swelling out on his forehead as if about to burst.

At last! his knee was up and braced against the rock. Another desperate clutch at the rope--another heave--still another. The cliff edge was rounding back. Every upward hitch was easier than the one before. Now he was scrambling up on toes and knees; now he could rise to his feet.

The line led across a waterworn ledge and downward. Ashton peered over, and saw the senseless body of Blake wedged against the other side of the ledge. About it, close below the arms, the line was knotted fast.

Ashton stared wonderingly at the still, white face of the unconscious man. It was covered with cold sweat. A peculiar twist in the sprawling left leg caught his attention. He looked--and understood. Panting with exertion, he staggered down the ledges of the lower side of the barrier to where the river burst furiously out of the mouth of the tunnel.

Hurled by that mad torrent from the darkness of the gorged cavern straight upon a line of rocks, all Blake's strength and quickness had not enabled him to save himself from injury. Yet he had crept up those rough ledges, dragging his shattered leg. Atrocious as must have been his 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 back up the ledges. He stripped off his tattered flannel shirt, dipped it in 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 dripping garment. After a time the eyelids of the prostrate man fluttered and lifted, and the pale blue eyes stared upward with returning consciousness.

"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 can I do it without the revolver?"

"No, build a fire," replied the engineer. He raised a heavy hand to point towards the high end of the barrier. "Driftwood up there. Bring it 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 up and merged in the precipice foot. The ma.s.s of rock that formed the barrier had fallen out of the face of the lower part of the canon wall, leaving a great hollow in the rock. But above the hollow the upper precipices beetled out and rose sheer, on up the dizzy heights to the verge of the chasm. Contrasted with this awesome undermined wall, the broken, steeple-sloped precipices adjoining it on the upstream side looked hopefully scalable to Ashton. He marked out a line of shelves and crevices running far up to where the full sunlight smiled on the rock.

But Blake had told him to fetch wood for a fire, that they might signal the watchers on the heights. He hastened up over the rocks to the heaps of logs and branches stranded on the high end of the barrier by 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 Ashton approached, he was horrified to see that the largest and highest situated piles were nothing else than ma.s.ses of bones. Drawn by a gruesome fascination, he climbed up to the nearest of the ghastly heaps. The loose ribs and vertebrae scattered down the slope seemed to him the size of human ribs and vertebrae. He shuddered as they crunched under his tread.

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

Sick with horror and loathing, Ashton ran to s.n.a.t.c.h up an armful of the smaller driftwood and hurry back down to the center of the barrier. He found Blake lying white and still. But beside him were three cartridges from which the bullets had been worked out. At the terse command of the engineer, Ashton ground one of the older and drier pieces of wood to minute fragments on a rock.

Blake emptied the powder from one of the cartridges into the little pile of splinters, and holding the edge of another sh.e.l.l against a corner of the rock, tapped the cap with a stone. At the fifth stroke the cap exploded. The loosened powder of the cartridge flared out into the powder-sprinkled tinder. Soon a fire of the dry, half-rotted driftwood was blazing bright and almost smokeless in the twilight of the depths.

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