“Wouldn’t the trees outside the chaparral obstruct the view?”
“That depends. We’re on the peak of a hill, you know. The trees not only are scattered in our immediate vicinity, but they’re all much lower. If only one of us could get up there and find out!”
They walked about looking up at the rocks, and finally the girl discovered a jutting portion near the top of one of them that she decided she could rope. She had left none of her accessory equipment with the saddles, so now she hurried between the rocks and reappeared with a thirty-five-foot plaited lariat of rawhide.
“Now, if I can get a lull in the wind! But we’re pretty well sheltered.”
She widened the noose in the hondo, stood back, and circled it about her head. The first cast she missed, as the wind whipped the noose from the target with a fretful whang. But when the rope sang from her hand again the noose settled nicely over the elevated protuberance, and she drew it taut.
“If you can’t climb it, I can,” she informed him sweetly.
For answer The Falcon laid hands on the rawhide and, with a vigorous boost from her, started climbing, his knees working against the face of the rock to aid him.
“You’re all right,” she applauded as he mounted swiftly and dexterously. “The only fears I ever entertained about you, Tom, were that you might turn out to be a mamma’s boy. But you ride like a saddle tramp and you climb beautifully.”
“Huh!” grunted The Falcon, as he reached the noose and clambered to the summit of the rock.
He stood erect cautiously and looked away on all sides, his feet planted and his body braced against the wind.