CHAPTER XIII
Apparently there was no possible way by which we might hope to cross thecanyon, and I threw myself prone upon the top of the stony brink of thechasm and peered down the awful abyss at the silver thread, shining inthe gloom of the shadows, which marked the course of a stream, andwondered what the Boy Scouts of Troop 6 of Marlborough would do underthe circumstances.
I studied the face of the opposite cliff in a vain search for some hintto the solution of the problem before us, looking up and down from sideto side as far as allowed by the range of my vision. At length myattention wandered to the perpendicular face of the cliff, on the top ofwhich my body was sprawled; there was an upright crack in the face ofthe stone wall, and as I examined the fracture I saw that a piece ofwood had lodged in the crack; a piece of wood in a crevice in a rock isnot so unusual an occurrence as to excite remark; but when it occurredto me that we were then far above the timber line, my interest andcuriosity were at once aroused.
The end of the stick was within a short distance from my hand, andreaching down I grasped the wood and brought forth, not a short club orstick, as I thought to be concealed there, but a very long pole. Theresult of my investigations was so unexpected that I came dangerouslynear allowing the thing to slide through my fingers and fall to thebottom of the canyon. It was a neatly-smoothed, slender piece oflodge-pole pine which was brought to view, and it had a crooked rootnicely spliced to one end and bound tightly in place with rawhidethongs. Big Pete was wholly absorbed in the trail, the study of which hehad resumed, and when I looked up he was down on all fours, minutelystudying the ground. Presently he cried, "Le-loo, tha' pesky lad ha'been over wha' you be after sompen and he took it back tha' again aforehe made his jump! If you're any good you'll find what the lad wasafter."
"He was after his barleycorn broomstick," I replied, proudly, "and hereit is, although I must confess it is a pretty long one for a fellow ofhis size, and it looks more like a giant Bo-Peep's crook than a witch'sbroom."
Big Pete eagerly snatched the pole from my hands and examined itcarefully. At length he said, "This hyer is the end used for the handle;one can see by the finger marks, an' this crook is used to scrape stonewith, one kin see, with half an eye, by the way the end is sandpaperedoff. Over tha' air some marks on the stone which look almighty like asif they'd been made by the end of this yer hook slipping down the faceof the rock.
"Now, I wonder wha' cud be up tha' on the top of the rock that the boywanted," mused Big Pete, and for a moment or so he stood in silentthought; at length he exclaimed, "Why, bless my corn-shucking soul, if Idon't believe he's got a lariat staked out tha' an' crosses this ditchsame as we-uns aimed to do!" With that he began raking and scraping thetop of the opposite rock with the shepherd's crook, and presently therecame tumbling and twisting like a snake down the face of the cliff, along braided rawhide rope with a loop at the bottom end.
"Waugh, Le-loo! tha's no witchcraft 'bout this 'cep the magic ofcommon-sense; but we hain't through with him yit!" By this time Pete hadthe end of the rawhide rope in his hands and was testing the strength ofits anchorage upon the opposite cliff. The point where it was fastenedprojected some distance over the ledge, where the supposed landing-placewas located, thus making it possible for one to swing at the end of therope from our side without danger of coming into too violent contactwith the opposite cliff.
As soon as my big friend was satisfied that the rope was safe hegrasped it with his two hands, and with one foot in the loop and theother free to use as a fender, he sailed across the abyss and landedsafely upon the crumbling ledge opposite.
Holding fast to the rawhide rope with his hands and bracing his feetagainst the rock, Pete could walk up the face of the cliff by goinghand-over-hand up the cable at the same time. He had almost reached thetop when I was horror-stricken to see a small hand and brown arm reachover the precipice; but it was neither the grace nor the beauty of thisshapely bit of anatomy which sent the blood surging to my heart, but thefact that the cold gray glint of a long-bladed knife caught my eyes andfascinated me with the fabled "charm" of a serpent. The power of speechforsook me, but with great effort I succeeded in giving utterance to theinarticulate noise people gurgle when confronted in their sleep by ashapeless horror. Big Pete heard the noise, but he was not unnervedwhen he saw the knife, neither did he show any nightmare symptoms,although he was dangling over the terrible abyss with a full knowledgethat it needed but a touch of the keen blade of that knife to sever thestraining lariat and dash him, a mangled mass, on the rocks below. Thedanger was too real to give Pete the nightmare; there was nothing spookyto him in the glittering knife blade, and only ghosts and thesupernatural could give Big Pete the nightmare. Calmly he looked at thehand grasping the power of death with its strong tapering fingers.Suddenly and in a firm, commanding voice he gave the order, "Drap tha'knife!"
Ever since I had been in the company of this masterful forest companionI had obeyed his commands as a matter of course, and so was notsurprised to see the fingers instantly relax their grasp and the knifego gyrating to the mysterious depths. In a few moments Big Pete was upand over the edge of the rock and hidden from my view.
Seizing the long-handled shepherd's crook, I caught the dangling end ofthe lariat, and was soon scrambling up the face of the cliff, leaving atrail which the veriest novice would not fail to notice and sendingshowers of the crumbling stones down the path taken by the knife; it wasseveral minutes before I had clambered over the face of the projectingcrag and was safe across the black chasm which lay athwart our trail.
If the Wild Hunter was indeed my father, he certainly was a woodcrafterand scout to bring pride to a fellow's heart, for I doubted not that theIndian boy was his retainer because the porcupine quill decorations onhis buckskin shirt had the same peculiar pattern as that on the wamus ofthe Wild Hunter himself as well as on the collar of the pet sheep I hadkilled, and also on the buckskin bag of gold.