It was nothing more serious than a hard and toilsome climb after that,

a continuous struggle testing every muscle, straining every sinew,

causing both to sink down again and again, panting and exhausted, no

longer stimulated by imminent peril. The narrow cleft they followed

led somewhat away from the exposed front of the precipice, yet arose

steep and jagged before them, a slender gash through the solid rock, up

which they were often compelled to force their passage; again it became

clogged with masses of debris, dead branches, and dislodged fragments

of stone, across which they were obliged to struggle desperately, while

once they completely halted before a sheer smoothness of rock wall that

appeared impassable. It was bridged finally by a cedar trunk, which

Hampton wrenched from out its rocky foothold, and the two crept

cautiously forward, to emerge where the sunlight rested golden at the

summit. They sank face downward in the short grass, barely conscious

that they had finally won their desperate passage.

Slowly Hampton succeeded in uplifting his tired body and his reeling

head, until he could sit partially upright and gaze unsteadily about.

The girl yet remained motionless at his feet, her thick hair, a mass of

red gold in the sunshine, completely concealing her face, her slender

figure quivering to sobs of utter exhaustion. Before them stretched

the barren plain, brown, desolate, drear, offering in all its wide

expanse no hopeful promise of rescue, no slightest suggestion even of

water, excepting a fringe of irregular trees, barely discernible

against the horizon. That lorn, deserted waste, shimmering beneath the

sun-rays, the heat waves already becoming manifest above the

rock-strewn surface, presented a most depressing spectacle. With hand

partially shading his aching eyes from the blinding glare, the man

studied its every exposed feature, his face hardening again into lines

of stern determination. The girl stirred from her position, flinging

back her heavy hair with one hand, and looking up into his face with

eyes that read at once his disappointment.

"Have--have you any water left?" she asked at last, her lips parched

and burning as if from fever.

He shook the canteen dangling forgotten at his side. "There may be a

few drops," he said, handing it to her, although scarcely removing his

fixed gaze from off that dreary plain. "We shall be obliged to make

those trees yonder; there ought to be water there in plenty, and

possibly we may strike a trail."

She staggered to her feet, gripping his shoulder, and swaying a little

from weakness, then, holding aside her hair, gazed long in the

direction he pointed.




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