“Yes, I suppose so.” Her reply was rather weak.
“Then we’d better get under way. Terry said the chimney was the worst of it and we are through with that now. It ends at this ledge.” He helped her to her feet. “Brrr—that wind is cold on wet clothes. If we don’t get moving, we’ll cop a dose of pneumonia, sure as shooting!”
“You’re a nice, thoughtful fella, Bill,” Dorothy smiled grimly in his direction. “Trouble is your thoughtfulness is oddly strenuous at times. Is there much farther to go?”
“We’re more than half way,” he assured her, “and from now on you’ll get more walking than climbing.”
Dorothy wanted to laugh but was too tired to do so.
“Lead on, MacDuffer,” she cried gamely. “I’m lame, halt and blind, but I’ll do my best to follow my chief!”
“Atta girl,” he commended. “Give us your paw again, we can travel better that way.”
“We’ll travel, all right—that is, unless our friend Terry is a dyed-in-the-wool fabricator.”
“Hopefully not, as they say in the Fatherland,” he chuckled. He caught her hand in his and they started on a climb up the steep hill that ran back from the ledge.
As Bill had predicted, the going here was not nearly so difficult as it had been in the chimney. So far as Dorothy could tell, the cliffs, which were covered with a grass-grown rubble, sloped in at this point, and at a much easier angle of ascent. Whereas the chimney was almost perpendicular, here, by bending forward and aiding progress with occasional handholds on bushes and rocky outcroppings, it was possible to do more than merely creep forward.