At last her foot held firm in a crevice three feet above the floor.
Clutching the ledge-top, she groped for another step—and found it.
In a moment she was on the ledge.
She sank there, covering her face with her hands. The eyes had blazed again scarcely three feet away. She felt the breath of hot nostrils, the rough hair of a beast, as the thing sprang. She felt that the end had come, but she still clung to the ledge.
As she uncovered her eyes, slowly, she was astonished to see that the faint light had returned. It came, as she had thought, over a concealed shelf of stone above the rocky incline.
The eyes had vanished. The cave was still.
She began to scale the incline. Her hands and feet caught nubs and slits of the surface and a little higher she felt the cool dampness of earth and grasped the root of a tree. As she drew herself up, she looked over the shelf and saw, at one end of it, the open day.
She crawled a little way upon the shelf then stopped. She hardly dared to go on. What if the opening, large enough to admit the light, were too small for her to pass through? What if the light had been only a lure to torture her? What if she must return into the darkness with that thing unknown, the thing with the blazing eyes!
She crept on with her eyes shut. A stronger glow of light upon the closed lids told her she had reached the end of the shelving. The next moment would tell her if she had reached freedom or renewed captivity. She looked up.
Three of Red Snake's young warriors had gained most of the plaudits of the village during the afternoon of the hunt. They rode together and not only did they bring in many foxes and coyotes but much news of the white people. They had met armed men throughout all the mountain country, riding up and down the river. The armed men had greeted them fairly and had asked them for information of other white men who had stolen a girl and carried her away. The white men were thus fighting among themselves. It was a propitious time for the coining of the new Queen.
These three young men, about five o'clock in the afternoon, had just started the drive of a coyote towards the level country when the quarry doubled suddenly and turned into the hills.
With shouts and shots, the Indians pursued it, but their horses were no match for it on the devious wooded paths, and grunting their disgust they saw it dive into a burrow in a rocky hollow of the cliff.