"Watch me," said Bill, calmly. "If you do not think you can follow me in such a spider's way, cling where you are till I bring a friend and a lasso that we may swing you over here. It was necessary that we should leave no trail those dogs dare pursue," he added apologetically.
"Go on," said Ranald, who felt his blood boil with the determination to show this strange hybrid that he had, at least the bravery of the white race, if not the athletic craft of the aborigines.
Thus adjured, the Cherokee inserted his hands in the prolonged crevice, let his body hang at the end of his arms with no other hold; and gradually worked himself along some twenty feet.
The watcher suffered more than he with the suspense. After a period seeming immeasurable, the way was clear; the rock was untenanted save by the young man, and he might have believed he was abandoned in this horrific site by a deluding demon. He looked up: a thousand feet of granite seemed bowing out to fall and entomb him; he looked outward—miles of ether intervened betwixt him and the tops of gigantic trees; he looked down, just for an instant's fraction, and felt his heart shrink; he was some three thousand feet over a cup of frozen water—a lake diminished thus by the space.
"Come!" said the Cherokee's voice, designedly emotionless that he might not affect the young man in any way.
The latter breathed a prayer to live for the sake of the bereaved daughter of his patron, and steadily swung himself over the chasm by his eight fingers alone; the thumbs seemed useless; the cliff fell away insensibly beneath him, so that his feet failed to touch. It was the dream of a man-fly acted out.
Finally, the end of the crack was attained. Here the climber without an assistant was a doomed man, unless he could retreat as he came—almost an impossibility. But, on this occasion, Cherokee Bill was waiting, with the loop of a counterbalanced rope in his hand, which he lowered over the young man and drew up so as to engirdle him. More than his pair of arms were not needed, considering the size of the boulder which weighed the farther end of the cord; but, none the less, two other men were hauling on it. In a few minutes the young man stood on the threshold of the cavern of the Old Nick's Jump. This was the only other way in.
With a cordial wave of the hand, Cherokee Bill presented his protégé to Jim the Yager and Mr. Filditch.
"A recruit," said he, laconically, "and A one! We are going to have some rare tussles, right soon and right here; but this friend o' ours will keep up his end o' the board, and don't you forget who says so!"