Devine nodded. "I guess they're 'most pulling their arms off trying to haul the thing across," he said. "It should have come itself, but the sheave the trolley runs on must have jammed, or they haven't pulled all the kinks and snarls out of the rope. It's quite a big log they've loaded her with."
The suspended trunk still oscillated, and a faint clinking came up with a hoarse murmur of voices from the hollow. Then there was silence, and Devine, who pointed to a fallen cedar, took out his cigar-case.
"We'll stay right here, and see the thing out," he said. "I guess the boys have quite enough to worry them just now."
Barbara surmised that most of the anxiety would fall on Brooke, and wondered why she should feel as eager as she did to see the fir trunk safely swung across. The economical handling of mining props was naturally not a subject she had any particular interest in, though she realized that the success of his venture was of some importance to the man who had stretched the rope across the cañon. There was no ostensible reason why it should affect her, and yet she was sensible of a curious nervous impatience.
In the meanwhile, it was growing darker, and she could not quite see what the dim figures across the river were doing. They did not, in fact, appear to be doing anything in particular, beyond standing in a group, while the rope no longer oscillated. A thin, white mist commenced to drift out of the hollow in filmy wisps, and, in a curious fashion, suggested the vast depth of it. The silence the roar of the river broke through grew more intense as the chill of the distant snow descended, and the stately pines seemed to grow older and greater of girth. They dwarfed the tiny clustering figures into insignificance, and as iron columns and the raw gashes in the side of the gully faded into the gathering night, it seemed to Barbara that here in her primeval fastnesses Nature ignored man's puny handiwork.
Then it was with a little thrill of anticipation she saw there was a movement among the dusky figures at last, but it cost her an effort to sit still when one of them appeared to move out on the rope, for she felt she knew who it must be. Devine rose sharply, and flung his cigar away, while his wife seemed to shiver apprehensively.
"One of them is coming across. Isn't it horribly dangerous?" she said.
Devine nodded. "It depends a good deal on what he means to do, but if he figures on clearing the jammed trolley there is a risk, especially to a man who has only one sound hand," he said. "They've slung him under the spare one. It's most probably Brooke."
Mrs. Devine glanced at Barbara, and fancied that the rigidity of her attitude was a trifle significant. The girl, however, said nothing, for her lips were pressed together, and she felt a shiver run through her as she watched the dusky figure sliding down the curving rope. The rope itself was no longer visible, but the dangling shape that moved across the horrible gulf was forced up by the whiteness of the drifting mists below. She held her breath when it stopped, and swung perilously beside the pine trunk which oscillated too, and then clenched her fingers viciously as it rose and apparently clutched at something overhead. Then she became sensible of the distressful beating of her heart, and that the tension was growing unendurable. Dark pines and hillside seemed to have faded now, and the dim objects outlined against the sliding mists dominated her attention. Still, though they were invisible to her, the space between the hoary pines, tremendous rock wall, and never-melting snow, formed a fitting arena for that conflict between daring humanity and unsubdued Nature.
Barbara never knew how long she sat there with set lips and straining eyes, but the time seemed interminable, until at last she gasped when Devine, who had been standing as motionless as the pines behind him, moved abruptly.