They crept among low shrubs and around the bowlders, carefully guarding

every slightest movement lest some rustle of disturbed foliage, or

sound of loosened stone, might draw the fire of those keen watchers.

Nor dared they ignore the close proximity of their own little company,

who, amid such darkness, might naturally suspect them for approaching

savages. Every inch of their progress was attained through tedious

groping, yet the distance to be traversed was short, and Hampton soon

found himself pressing against the uprising precipice. Passing his

fingers along the front, he finally found that narrow ledge which he

had previously located with such patient care, and reaching back, drew

the girl silently upon her feet beside him. Against that background of

dark cliff they might venture to stand erect, the faint glimmer of

reflected light barely sufficient to reveal to each the shadowy outline

of the other.

"Don't move an inch from this spot," he whispered. "It wouldn't be a

square deal, Kid, to leave those poor fellows to their death without

even telling them there's a chance to get out."

She attempted no reply, as he glided noiselessly away, but her face,

could he have seen it, was not devoid of expression. This was an act

of generosity and deliberate courage of the very kind most apt to

appeal to her nature, and within her secret heart there was rapidly

developing a respect for this man, who with such calm assurance won his

own way. He was strong, forceful, brave,--Homeric virtues of real

worth in that hard life which she knew best. All this swept across her

mind in a flash of revelation while she stood alone, her eyes

endeavoring vainly to peer into the gloom. Then, suddenly, that black

curtain was rent by jagged spurts of red and yellow flame. Dazed for

an instant, her heart throbbing wildly to the sharp reports of the

rifles, she shrank cowering back, her fascinated gaze fixed on those

imp-like figures leaping forward from rock to rock. Almost with the

flash and sound Hampton sprang hastily back and gathered her in his

arms.

"Catch hold, Kid, anywhere; only go up, and quick!"

As he thus lifted her she felt the irregularities of rock beneath her

clutching fingers, and scrambled instinctively forward along the narrow

shelf, and then, reaching higher, her groping hands clasped the roots

of a projecting cedar. She retained no longer any memory for Hampton;

her brain was completely terrorized. Inch by inch, foot by foot,

clinging to a fragment of rock here, grasping a slippery branch there,

occasionally helped by encountering a deeper gash in the face of the

precipice, her movements concealed by the scattered cedars, she toiled

feverishly up, led by instinct, like any wild animal desperately driven

by fear, and only partially conscious of the real dread of her terrible

position. The first time she became aware that Hampton was closely

following was when her feet slipped along a naked root, and she would

have plunged headlong into unknown depths had she not come into sudden

contact with his supporting shoulder. Faint and dizzy, and trembling

like the leaf of an aspen, she crept forward onto a somewhat wider

ledge of thin rock, and lay there quivering painfully from head to

foot. A moment of suspense, and he was outstretched beside her,

resting at full length along the very outer edge, his hand closing

tightly over her own.




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