In the momentary halt Larry looked the outcropping mass of shale over with an appraisive eye.
“Yep,” he said, as if he were letting his thought slip into spoken words without realizing it, “I believe it can be done.”
“Believe what can be done?” Dick demanded.
“Stopping the sun-dance of the snake-scales,” Larry responded shortly; but he did not explain what he meant as they eased themselves down to the big rock which marked the location of the curious dents in the shale surface.
The “dents” grew in size as they approached them; so much, indeed, as to become good-sized hollows when they looked down upon them from the top of the island boulder. Out of one of them a thin rivulet of the shale was trickling, and they could trace its creeping, crawling course a long way down the slope. Suddenly Larry said: “Take off your coat, Dick,” and he set the example by quickly stripping his own. “Now your belt,” and again he set the example in his own person.
Dickie Maxwell obeyed, but not without question.
“Now what on top of earth is biting you this time?” he queried.
“I’ll show you in a minute,” Larry replied.
With workmanlike deftness he hooked the two belts together by their buckles and then knotted the free end of each to a sleeve of a coat. The result was a clumsy substitute for a life-line long enough to reach from the summit of the island rock to a point some distance out in the shale stream.
“Now, then; hang on and anchor me,” was the next order; and when Dick had made a snubbing post of himself, [Larry went over the edge of the rock and] by keeping hold of the makeshift life-line [worked his way] cautiously [out to one of the depressions]. There he stooped, picked up something, and then came back as he had gone, edging himself along in a way to disturb the sliding stuff as little as possible, and taking a hand from Dick to help him climb back to the top of the boulder-island.