“About one chance in ten thousand that anybody would hear me,” he told himself. “But getting out alone is a darned sight longer shot. Trick camera work—and the best to be had—it would take, to make me even look like getting out. My best bet is a correct imitation of the Johnnywater Voice. But I wouldn’t advise anybody to bet any money on me.”
He was shouting all the while Monty was explaining to Patricia how the Voice had come to give Johnnywater Cañon so sinister a reputation. But his voice came muffled to the outer surface of the bowlder-strewn bluff, and diminished rapidly down the slope. Joe might have heard it had he been awake, since his ears were sufficiently keen to hear Gary when he shouted the night before. But Joe was asleep with his head under the tarp. And Patricia and Monty were talking inside the cabin. So Gary shouted until he could shout no more, and gave up and rested awhile.
After that he stood leaning heavily against the wall and scraped doggedly at the seams in the granite with his knife-blade.
“——and I love you, Pat. I wouldn’t have you different if I could. Gary.”
Patricia was obliged to wipe the tears away from her eyes before she could read the last two lines of Gary’s last letter. As it was she splotched the penciled words with a great drop or two, before she hid her face in her arms folded upon a high shoulder of the rock on which she sat, and cried until no more tears would come.
After a while she heard Monty calling her name, but at first she did not care. The contents of that last letter proved that it had been written three weeks ago, evidently a day or so before Gary had ridden over to Monty’s camp. She was afraid to think what might have befallen since.
It was the Voice of the rim rock that roused her finally. She stood up and listened, sure that it was Gary. To-day the beseeching note was in the Voice, and all Monty’s talk of its elusiveness went for naught. It was Gary up there, she was sure of that. And she knew that he was in trouble. So she rolled his letters to her for easier carrying, cupped her palms around her mouth, shouted that she was coming, and started up the bluff.
At the cabin Monty heard her and came running down to the creek.
“That ain’t Gary!” he shouted to her. “That’s the Voice I was tellin’ about. Yuh-all better keep down off that bluff, Miss Connolly!”
Patricia poised on a rock and looked back.