He stooped and dragged out the tangled leather from under their feet. “And I left the reins tied to the wheel when I slipped the horses. We might manage to scale the tree yet.”
He disentangled the traces, and leaned over and untied the reins and knotted them together, working with shaking fingers and in feverish haste.
He stood up in the buggy seat and whirled the looped coils of leather, and threw them high for the fork of the tree above them. He missed the first few times, or the coils caught and hung there till he jerked them back, but at last they curled over the fork and fell to the other side of the tree. Dolly jumped down and went wading round, and leaped and caught the end of the trace. “Hold that end, Miss Ess,” he said, “and stand up and catch this one if you can.”
He swung the end round to her, and she caught and held it while he climbed the buggy. He stood on the seat again and knotted the far end in a loop, and passed the other end through it and hauled taut till it jambed on the branch above, took a couple of turns of the free end round the wheel, and told Ess to hold on. “And up I go,” he said. “And then I’ll haul while you climb, and we’ll lash ourselves to the mast and hang on till the flood goes where it jolly well pleases. Hup,” and he sprang and commenced to climb hand over hand with his feet against the trunk.
“See how it’s done,” he called down breathlessly, when he reached the fork and sat astride it. “Easy as walking upstairs. Now untwist your end and pass it two or three times round your waist, and tie a firm knot—half-a-dozen knots. Have you done that?”
“Wait a minute,” she called back. “Yes—all right.”
“Now twist the loops round, so the knot comes fair to the front, and reach far up as you can and grab with both hands, and climb as much as you are able. Now—go.”
She tried to imitate the way he had put his feet against the trunk, but they slipped, and she bumped into the tree, bruising her knuckles and forcing a cry. “Climb,” shouted Dolly. She struggled, and Dolly strained and hauled, but the weight was too much, and he had to slack her down the two or three feet she had climbed.
“You are a lively weight, you know,” he called down laughingly, but with a feeling of dismay.
“What will I do next?” she answered. “You can never lift me that height, I know, and I simply can’t climb.”