“Then I came to myself, to lie helpless as if in a dream. I could not stir or make a sound; but I could hear distinctly, as I lay low down where I had fallen, the sounds made by some one lowering himself down the side of the cañon. Now twigs were breaking, and now stones kept falling; and after what seemed to be a long time, full of a dull sense of pain and drowsiness, I was conscious of a heavy breathing as of a wild beast.”
“A bear,” said the old lawyer involuntarily.
“No,” said the young man with a bitter smile; “a worse kind of wild beast than that: a man, sir—mine own familiar friend—Dan Portway.”
“Ah!”
“He was searching my pockets, and taking everything about me; my roughly-made, plain gold ring—pure gold from a pocket in the mountains—what letters I had; everything. Of course I had not much with me; nearly all I possessed was at my tent in the saddlebags miles away.”
“You felt all this?”
“And saw, though my eyes were nearly closed. And at last, as it seemed to me, he was about to finish his work by casting me down headlong into the profound depths of the great chasm, when a devilish thought entered his mind and seemed to flash into mine as he held me.”
There was another pause, and the young man’s voice sounded very husky, and he seemed to be suffering the bygone horror over again as he recommenced:
“I tell you I could not stir, but I could think, and feel, and see that devil’s satisfied grin as he must have said to himself:—
“‘Some day, perhaps, his body may be found, and then they will say he was last seen in my company, and it might prove awkward. They shall think he was killed by the Indians.’”