Lige quickly made fast the line to a tree.
"Yes? Got him?" he answered, leaning over the cliff.
"I see him," called Tad, his voice sounding hollow and unnatural to those above. "He's so far to the right of me that I can't reach him. Will it be all right for me to swing myself?"
"Where is he?"
"Lodged in the branches of a pinyon tree, I think it is. But he doesn't answer me."
"Wait a minute," cautioned the mountaineer.
Lige searched until he found a limb some three inches in diameter, and this he placed under the rope so as to relieve the strain of the rock upon it, that there might be no danger of the leather being sawed in two by contact with the ledge.
"All right. Now try it."
The creaking of the rawhide told them that Tad Butler was swaying from side to side, fifty feet below them, at the end of a slender line. Lige, leaning over the brink, was able to follow the boy's movements by the aid of the thin arc of light made by the torch in Tad's hand.
At last, the thread of light contracted into a point, and the watching guide knew that the courageous boy had finally reached the pinyon tree.