“Wait!” he cried. “Don’t slide down, Darrel, until I get to the bottom of the wall. Will you wait?”
“Sure I’ll wait. I’ll give you all the chance you want to see the performance.”
Frank went down the fissure much faster than he had climbed up, and without a mishap of any kind had soon regained the bottom of the cañon. Making his way to where Ballard and Clancy were standing, he turned his eyes upward. Darrel waved his hat to him.
“So that’s what you were up to, eh?” called Frank. “Why didn’t you tell us what you were about and we could have helped you get the ropes.”
“I don’t think you would,” came the laughing reply from Darrel. “You thought the work was too dangerous. Here I come!”
He swung half around, preparatory to lowering himself.
“Better wait until a couple of us come up there, Darrel!” Frank called.
“Don’t need anybody. You can’t see the paloverde, as it’s screened by the greasewood, but you can gamble that I tied the rope good and hard. Now, watch!”
Thereupon Darrel lowered himself down and was presently swinging against the smooth wall. He was agile enough, and twisted one leg around the dangling rope and slid slowly toward the shelf. Then, when he was some ten feet above the shelf, a most horrifying thing happened. Before he could cry out, or make any move to save himself if that had been possible, he dropped like a stone to the ledge, struck heavily upon his side, lengthwise of his body, rolled off limply, fell sprawling to a jutting bowlder four or five feet below and lay there, silent and motionless. A scraggly tree, growing from a crevice among the stones, was all that held him from dropping to the foot of the cliff!
The rope, strangely separated at the loop which had coiled around the paloverde, fell writhing through the air, pulled itself out of Darrell’s nerveless hand, and dropped at the feet of the three horror-stricken lads below.