Without replying she lay back against the slope of the mountain, closed her eyes and relaxed, breathing deeply. Her chest expanded deeply to the long indrawn breath which filled her lungs with the rare air. She felt suddenly a little sleepy, dreaming longingly of the unutterable content one could find in just going to sleep with the cliff-scarred mountainside for couch.
She stirred and opened her eyes. Rod Norton, the sheriff of San Juan, a man who a few brief hours ago had been unknown to her, his name unfamiliar, sat two paces from her, smoking. She and this man of whom she still knew rather less than nothing were alone in the world; just the two of them lifted into the sky, separated by a dreary stretch of desert lands from other men and women . . . bound together by a bit of rope. She tried to see his face; the profile, more guessed than seen, appeared to her fancy as unrelenting as the line of cliff just beyond him, clear-cut against the sky.
Yet somehow . . . she did not definitely formulate the thought of which she was at the time but dimly, vaguely conscious . . . she was glad that she had come to San Juan. And she was not afraid of the silent man at her side, nor sorry that circumstance had given them this night and its labors.
Norton knocked out his pipe. Together they got to their feet.
"More careful than ever now," he cautioned her. "Look out for each step and go slowly. We're there in ten minutes. Ready?"
"Ready," she answered.
CHAPTER VII
IN THE HOME OF CLIFF-DWELLERS
Those remaining ten minutes tried all that there was of endurance in Virginia Page. Often Norton, bidding her wait a moment, climbed on to some narrow ledge above her and, drawing the rope steadily through his hands, gave her what aid he could; often, clinging with hand and foot she thought breathlessly of the steep fall of cliff which the darkness hid from her eyes, but which grew ever steeper in her mind as she struggled on. He had said it would be easier in daylight; she wondered if after all it would not have been more difficult could she have seen just what were the chances she was taking at every moment. But more and more she came to have utter faith in the quiet man going on before her, and in the piece of rope which stretched taut between them.