Ballard was a man and a lover; and his first definition of love was unquestioning loyalty. He was prepared to doubt the evidence of his senses, if need be, but not the perfections of the ideal he had set up in the inner chamber of his heart, naming it Elsa Craigmiles.
These communings and queryings, leading always into the same metaphysical labyrinth, brought the young engineer far on the down-river trail; were still with him when the trail narrowed to a steep one-man path and began to climb the hogback, with one side buttressed by a low cliff and the other falling sheer into the Boiling Water on the left. On this narrow ledge the dog went soberly ahead; and at one of the turns in the path Ballard came upon him standing solidly across the way and effectually blocking it.
"What is it, old boy?" was the man's query; and the dog's answer was a wag of the tail and a low whine. "Go on, old fellow," said Ballard; but the big St. Bernard merely braced himself and whined again. It was quite dark on the high ledge, a fringe of scrub pines on the upper side of the cutting blotting out a fair half of the starlight. Ballard struck a match and looked beyond the dog; looked and drew back with a startled exclamation. Where the continuation of the path should have been there was a gaping chasm pitching steeply down into the Boiling Water.
More lighted matches served to show the extent of the hazard and the trap-like peril of it. A considerable section of the path had slid away in a land- or rock-slide, and Ballard saw how he might easily have walked into the gulf if the dog had not stopped on the brink of it.
"I owe you one, good old boy," he said, stooping to pat the words out on the St. Bernard's head. "I'll pay it when I can; to you, to your mistress, or possibly even to your master. Come on, old fellow, and we'll find another way with less risk in it," and he turned back to climb over the mesa hill under the stone quarries, approaching the headquarters camp from the rear.
When the hill was surmounted and the electric mast lights of the camp lay below, the great dog stopped, sniffing the air suspiciously.
"Don't like the looks of it, do you?" said Ballard. "Well, I guess you'd better go back home. It isn't a very comfortable place down there for little dogs—or big ones. Good-night, old fellow." And, quite as if he understood, the St. Bernard faced about and trotted away toward Castle 'Cadia.
There was a light in the adobe shack when Ballard descended the hill, and he found Bromley sitting up for him. The first assistant engineer was killing time by working on the current estimate for the quarry subcontractor, and he looked up quizzically when his chief came in.
"Been bearding the lion in his den, have you?" he said, cheerfully. "That's right; there's nothing like being neighbourly, even with our friend the enemy. Didn't you find him all the things I said he was—and then some?"
"Yes," returned Ballard, gravely. Then, abruptly: "Loudon, who uses the path that goes up on our side of the canyon and over into the Castle 'Cadia valley?"