"They are all here."

"Show me where they are, and get ready the lantern and bandages and a sack of food."

"You are going down," she acquiesced. "You are going to Tom. And you are coming up with him--to me!"

"That is too much. I doubted you. Where are those things? He is waiting down there alone."

"Here is his child, my nephew," she said. "Hold him while I go for what you need. Here is my pistol. The man who shot you, who twice tried to murder you--he is somewhere up here. He will not harm me. But you--If he comes creeping in on you here, shoot him as you would shoot a coyote."

"The man who shot me? He is up here?"

"You have seen him every day since that first day I met you," replied the girl. "His name is Gowan."

"_Gowan?_"

"Kid Gowan, murderer! I saw his eyes as he looked at you, lying down there on the brink. Then I knew."

"But--if he--Where is Genevieve? I cannot go and leave you alone."

"You can--you must! He is a coward. He dare not follow you down that terrible place. No harm will come to me if you are gone. But if he comes back and finds you--do you not see that if he kills you, he must also kill me? But in the morning, when the others come--Oh, why hasn't Daddy come? All this long time since you went down into the depths, and he not with us! If only he were here!"

"Genevieve?" again inquired Ashton.

"She has gone. She started down the mountain for help when Kid went away. I'm so afraid for you, dear! He may be creeping back now--he may be waiting already, close by here, in the darkness. But if he has not heard our voices, he will go first to where you came up, and then to the tent. Keep quiet until I return. Wait; here is cream and egg.

Drink it all."

When he had drained the bowl that she held to his lips, she crept away. Ashton sat still, the warm, soft little body of the sleeping baby in his arms, the pistol in his bandaged right hand. In her excitement Isobel had forgotten his bound fingers. If Gowan had come on him then, he would have put the baby back in under the rock, and faced the puncher's revolver with a smile. What had he now to live for? He had lost her. She had not yet grasped the baseness of what he had thought and done. As soon as she realized ... And he could never forgive himself.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

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."

"G.o.d 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 a.s.surance. 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 canon. 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 canon. 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 gla.s.ses at the outstretched form of her brother, far beneath in the canon 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 ma.s.s 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 canon 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 ma.s.s 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 hoa.r.s.e 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--G.o.d!"

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 canon. But this the girl could not have seen even in midday.