CHAPTER V
ACROSS THE TRAVERSE
Elliot took off his shoes and turned toward the traverse.
"Think I'll see if I can cross to that stairway. You had better waithere, Miss O'Neill, until we find out if it can be done."
His manner was casual, his voice studiously light.
Sheba looked across the cliff and down to the boulder bed two hundredfeet below. "You can never do it in the world. Isn't there another wayup?"
"No. The wall above us slopes out. I've got to cross to the stairway. IfI make it I'm going to get a rope."
"Do you mean you're going back to town for one?"
"Yes."
Her eyes fastened to his in a long, unspoken question. She read theanswer. He was afraid to have her try the trough again. To get back totown by way of their roundabout ascent would waste time. If he was goingto rescue her before night, he must take the shortest cut, and that wasacross the face of the sheer cliff. For the first time she understoodhow serious was their plight.
"We can go back together by the trough, can't we?" But even as sheasked, her heart sank at the thought of facing again that dizzy height.The moment of horror when she had thought herself lost had shaken hernerve.
"It would be difficult."
The glance of the girl swept again the face of the wall he must cross.It could not be done without a rope. Her fear-filled eyes came back tohis.
"It's my fault. I made you come," she said in a low voice.
"Nonsense," he answered cheerfully. "There's no harm done. If I can'treach the stairway I can come back and go down by the trough."
Sheba assented doubtfully.
It had come on to drizzle again. The rain was fine and cold, almost amist, and already it was forming a film of ice on the rocks.
"I can't take time to go back by the trough. The point is that I don'twant you camped up here after night. There has been no sun on this sideof the spur and in the chill of the evening it must get cold even insummer."
He was making his preparations as he talked. His coat he took off andthrew down. His shoes he tied by the laces to his belt.
"I'll try not to be very long," he promised.
"It's God's will then, so it is," she sighed, relapsing into thevernacular.
Her voice was low and not very steady, for the heart of the girl washeavy. She knew she must not protest his decision. That was not the wayto play the game. But somehow the salt had gone from their light-heartedadventure. She had become panicky from the moment when her feet hadstarted the rubble in the trough and gone flying into the air. Thegayety that had been the note of their tramp had given place to fears.
Elliot took her little hand in a warm, strong grip. "You're not going tobe afraid. We'll work out all right, you know."
"Yes."
"It's not just the thing to leave a lady in the rain when you take herfor a walk, but it can't be helped. We'll laugh about it to-morrow."
Would they? she wondered, answering his smile faintly. Her courage wassapped. She wanted to cry out that he must not try the traverse, but sheset her will not to make it harder for him.
He turned to the climb.
"You've forgotten your coat," she reminded.
"I'm traveling light this trip. You'd better slip it on before you getchilled."
Sheba knew he had left it on purpose for her.
Her fascinated eyes followed him while he moved out from theplateau across the face of the precipice. His hand had found a knobof projecting feldspar and he was feeling with his right foot for ahold in some moss that grew in a crevice. He had none of the tools forclimbing--no rope, no hatchet, none of the support of numbers. All theallies he could summon were his bare hands and feet, his resilientmuscles, and his stout heart. To make it worse, the ice film from therain coated every jutting inch of quartz with danger.
But he worked steadily forward, moving with the infinite caution ofone who knows that there will be no chance to remedy later any mistake.A slight error in judgment, the failure in response of any one of fiftymuscles, would send him plunging down.
Occasionally he spoke to Sheba, but she volunteered no remarks. It washer part to wait and watch while he concentrated every faculty upon histask. He had come to an impasse after crossing a dozen feet of the walland was working up to get around a slab of granite which protruded, aconvex barrier, from the surface of the cliff. It struck the girl thatfrom a distance he must look like a fly on a pane of glass. Even to her,close as she was, that smooth rock surface looked impossible.
Her eye left him for an instant to sweep the gulf below. She gave alittle cry, ran to his coat, and began to wave it. For the first timesince Elliot had begun the traverse she took the initiative in speech.
"I see some people away over to the left, Mr. Elliot. I'm going to callto them." Her voice throbbed with hope.
But it was not her shouts or his, which would not have carried one tenththe distance, that reached the group in the valley. One of them caught aglimpse of the wildly waving coat. There was a consultation and two orthree fluttered handkerchiefs in response. Presently they moved on.
Sheba could not believe her eyes. "They're not leaving us surely?" shegasped.
"That's what they're doing," answered Gordon grimly. "They think we'recalling to them out of vanity to show them where we climbed."
"Oh!" She strangled a sob in her throat. Her heart was weighted as withlead.
"I'm going to make it. I think I see my way from here," her companioncalled across to her. "A fault runs to the foot of the stairway, if Ican only do the next yard or two."
He did them, by throwing caution to the winds. An icy, rounded boulderprojected above him out of reach. He unfastened his belt again and putthe shoes, tied by the laces, around his neck. There was one way to getacross to the ledge of the fault. He took hold of the two ends of thebelt, crouched, and leaned forward on tiptoes toward the knob. The loopof the belt slid over the ice-coated boss. There was no chance to drawback now, to test the hold he had gained. If the leather slipped he waslost. His body swung across the abyss and his feet landed on the littleledge beyond.
His shout of success came perhaps ten minutes later. "I've reachedthe stairway, Miss O'Neill. I'll try not to be long, but you'd betterexercise to keep up the circulation. Don't worry, please. I'll be backbefore night."
"I'm so glad," she cried joyfully. "I was afraid for you. And I'll notworry a bit. Good-bye."
Elliot made his way up to the summit and ran along a footpath whichbrought him to a bridge across the mountain stream just above the falls.The trail zigzagged down the turbulent little river close to the bank.Before he had specialized on the short distances Gordon had been across-country runner. He was in fair condition and he covered the groundfast.
About a mile below the falls he met two men. One of them was ColbyMacdonald. He carried a coil of rope over one shoulder. The bigAlaskan explained that he had not been able to get it out of hishead that perhaps the climbers who had waved at his party had been indifficulties. So he had got a rope from the cabin of an old miner andwas on his way back to the falls.
The three climbed to the falls, crossed the bridge, and reached the topof the cliff.
"You know the lay of the land down there, Mr. Elliot. We'll lower you,"decided Macdonald, who took command as a matter of course.
Gordon presently stood beside Sheba on the little plateau. She hadquite recovered from the touch of hysteria that had attacked her courage.The wind and the rain had whipped the color into her soft cheeks, haddisarranged a little the crinkly, blue-black hair, wet tendrils of whichnestled against her temples. The health and buoyancy of the girl were inthe live eyes that met his eagerly.
"You weren't long," was all she said.
"I met them coming," he answered as he dropped the loop of the rope overher head and arranged it under her shoulders.
He showed her how to relieve part of the strain of the rope on her fleshby using her hands to lift.
"All ready?" Macdon
ald called from above.
"All ready," Elliot answered. To Sheba he said, "Hold tight."
The girl was swung from the ledge and rose jerkily in the air. Shelaughed gayly down at her friend below.
"It's fun."
Gordon followed her a couple of minutes later. She was waiting to givehim a hand over the edge of the cliff.
"Miss O'Neill, this is Mr. Macdonald," he said, as soon as he had freedhimself from the rope. "You are fellow passengers on the Hannah."
Macdonald was looking at her straight and hard. "Your father's name--wasit Farrell O'Neill?" he asked bluntly.
"Yes."
"I knew him."
The girl's eyes lit. "I'm glad, Mr. Macdonald. That's one reason Iwanted to come to Alaska--to hear about my father's life here. Will youtell me?"
"Sometime. We must be going now to catch the boat--after I've had a lookat the cliff this young man crawled across."
He turned away, abruptly it struck Elliot, and climbed down the naturalstairway up which the young man had come. Presently he rejoined thoseabove. Macdonald looked at Elliot with a new respect.
"You're in luck, my friend, that we're not carrying you from the footof the cliff," he said dryly. "I wouldn't cross that rock wall for ahundred thousand dollars in cold cash."
"Nor I again," admitted Gordon with a laugh. "But we had either tohomestead that plateau or vacate it. I preferred the latter."
Miss O'Neill's deep eyes looked at him. She was about to speak, thenchanged her mind.