“You are not a judicious man, Lorimer,” he said. “I’m infinitely obliged to you, but no one would have blamed you for letting go.”
“We’ll let that pass,” I answered shortly. “I’m glad I did not. We are in an awkward place, and the first thing is to decide how to get out of it.”
There was a wry smile on Ormond’s face when he spoke again: “It’s certainly a perilous position, and a somewhat unusual one. You and I—of all men—to be hung up here together on the brink of eternity. Still I, at least, am doubtful whether I’ll ever get out again; there’s something badly broken inside of me.”
The hot blood surged to my forehead, for I understood what he meant, but that was a side issue, and, answering nothing, I scanned the slope for some way of ascent. There was none, and nothing without wings could have gained the valley. Ormond, too, realized this.
“All we can do, Lorimer,” he said, “is to wait until our friends assist us. In the meantime you might fire your rifle to suggest that they hurry!”
He spoke very thickly. I scraped the snow from the slung weapon’s muzzle, for this will sometimes burst a gun, and then a red flash answered the ringing report from the opposite slope, and presently a cry reached us from the foremost of the clambering figures. “Hold on! We’re coming to get you out!” it said.
Now most luckily we had brought several stout hide 274 ropes with us, which was a rather unusual procedure. The British Columbian mountaineer will carry a flour bag over moraine and glacier trusting only to the creeper spikes on his heels, and in objecting to the extra weight our guide said derisively: “We’ve quite enough to pack already, and I guess you don’t want to dress us up with a green veil, a crooked club with a spike in the end of it, and fathoms of spun hemp, like them tourist fellows bring out to sit in the woods with.”
Nevertheless, I insisted, and now we were thankful for the coupled lariats. They could not lower them directly toward me because of a tree, and when the end lay resting on the snow several yards away I braced myself to attempt the risky traverse. The slope was pitched as steeply as the average roof, and there was ice beneath the frost-dried powder that slid along it. Leaving the rifle behind, I drove the long blade of my knife deep down for a hand-hold before the first move.
“Lie flat and wriggle!” called a man above. “Jam the steel into the hard cake beneath!” and with the cold sweat oozing from my hair I proceeded to obey him. How long I took to cover the distance we could not afterward agree, but once I lay prone for minutes together, with both arms buried in the treacherous snow, which was slipping under me, and the end of the lariat a foot or two away. Then with a snake-like wriggle I grasped it, and there was a cry of relief from the watchers. I got a bight around Ormond’s shoulders, and after some difficulty fastened it. One cannot use ordinary knots on hide. Ready hands gathered in the slack, and my rival was drawn up swiftly, while they guided him diagonally around instead of under the jutting shelf from which we had fallen.
Then the end came down again, and with it fast about my shoulders I went back for the rifle, after which they 275 hauled me up, filling my neck and both sleeves with snow in the process. Though Harry laughed, his voice trembled when, as I gained the platform, he exclaimed: