CHAPTER XX—I DESCEND THE CLIFF
It wasn’t any use for Harry to say what I should do, and I guess he knew it. Mostly we did what he said and that was only right, I have to admit it.
But, anyway, nothing could have stopped me then.
“You can’t go down here,” Harry said.
“I’ll go up the road a ways,” I told him; “it isn’t so steep up farther.”
Harry told Grove to go back and stay in the car with Skinny and not let him get out. Grove went back, keeping to the inside edge of the road. I started along the road, looking for a place where I could climb down and Harry threw the light along ahead of me, but I had to go so far that pretty soon I was out of its reach.
“The cliff lower up that way?” he called after me.
“It isn’t so straight up,” I shouted back; “throw the light down where he is, so it will guide me when I get to the bottom.”
It wasn’t so hard scrambling down at the place I chose. I guess it was about five hundred feet further along from where Harry was, and about as far again from where the car was standing. The place wasn’t so steep and it wasn’t so high either, because the place where Harry was, was right about at the top of the hill. Only, one thing, it was mighty dark and blowing up windy, and while I was scrambling down I felt a drop of rain.
When I got to the bottom, I found it was all rough—rocky like—and it was hard to walk down. But, one thing, I could see the light good and plain. It looked just like a search-light, all straight and dusty, slanting down from the highest part of the cliff.
I called to Harry to ask him if it was pointed at the spot, but he didn’t answer me. I guess the wind was the other way, and besides, a voice carries up better than it carries down. Anyway, I knew he was up there on account of the light.
I started stumbling over rocks to get to the place where that shaft of light ended. It made one of those big rocks awful bright, but I couldn’t see the other rock, because it was behind it. And I couldn’t see the space between; I was kind of glad I couldn’t. But I knew I had to come to it.
All the while, I could sort of hear Pee-wee, the way he talked to Mrs. West, and I remembered how we always laughed at him. I guessed we’d go right back and I wondered how we’d fix—I mean what we’d do with him—anyway, we’d have to carry the body to a town and then telegraph. I said I wouldn’t want to be Harry to have to do that.
By now it was raining and blowing pretty hard. Two or three times I called up, but only once I could hear an answer, and even then I couldn’t make out what he said. I had to climb over rocks and big trunks and roots of trees that must have fallen down from above some time or other. It was pretty hard. All of a sudden, that shaft of light that I was following was gone and I stood there in the rain and it was pitch dark all around.
I shouted up to Harry at the top of my voice, and there was some kind of an answer, but I couldn’t make it out.
“What’s the matter?” I yelled. “Throw the light down. I can’t see.”
I heard a voice that seemed kind of as if it was far, far off somewhere, and I listened, trying to make it out. I wasn’t sure whether it was a voice or just the wind.
I called out, “What?” Gee, my head just throbbed from shouting so loud.
“K-i-i-l-ld, k-i-i-l-d.” That’s just what the voice seemed to say.
All of a sudden I stumbled over a rock and fell down in the pitch dark and knocked my head. For a second it made me see a bright light, but I knew it wasn’t real. I could feel my forehead was bleeding. My leg was hurt too, so I couldn’t get up. And my head just throbbed and throbbed and throbbed.
I called as loud as I could and it just made my head pound all the more.
I shouted, “Throw the light down here; I’m hurt!”
But the only answer I could hear was that voice saying “K-i-i-ild, k-i-i-ild——”