There came response, however, from some forest cover. A bullet clipped past his ear and flattened against the rock wall behind him. A second shot went just over his head. His triumphant enemy evidently was willing to shoot him off the shelf. Before stepping back out of range, he emptied his gun hit-miss into the brush below. He was tempted to risk the running jump toward the nearest treetop, but in time he checked himself, not yet ready to risk the hundredth chance. There must be some safer way down. His eyes lifted to the cerulean panoply overhead, then eased down to the line of the granite floor and swept the feathery tops of green. They sought inspiration and they found it. With sure strokes of his ax he attacked the lone hemlock.
The trapped sergeant's "big idea" was one which required the preliminary of labor. His eyes were trained to accuracy and he trusted their measurement of the space between the top of the sturdy Scotch conifer and the trunk of the rock-rooted young hemlock. Attacking with his short-handled ax, he soon had the chips flying, with a pause now and then to calculate the exact direction of the tree's drop. His chief anxiety was not over his ability as an axman, but as to whether the umbrellalike branches of the fir would afford lodgment sufficiently strong to support the combined weight of the hemlock and himself.
With the small crackle of a bunch of penny firecrackers, the tree soon broke away from its stump. His ax-aim proved true. But to the sergeant the seconds seemed minutes during that period in which it was decided whether the falling tree would remain in the embrace of its half-sister of the pine family or would veer to one side for a plunge to the rocks below, there to mock him. A gasp of relief escaped his lips when, quivering throughout its length, it settled definitely into the very crotch for which he had aimed.
No time did he waste testing its strength and security. Either it would hold or it would not—either he would escape the trap into which the bog skinner had led him or meet his end in a plunge without cost or ceremony. As always before in his grown-up life, when the issue demanded he dared.
CHAPTER XII.
BY SINGLE STRAND.
After anchoring the severed trunk of the hemlock upon the shelf with such bowlders as he could move, to prevent, if possible, its turning, Sergeant Childress sat down on the brink, his legs dangling. He gripped the hemlock tightly, then lowered his body overside. That end of the tree, at least, supported his weight. With six-inch reaches, he began to move out from the ledge.
He dared not hurry; nor could he ease his progress by wriggling—the hold upon the fir of the hemlock was too uncertain. His body hung as a dead weight, the strain upon his arms, hands, and fingers increasing with every slow move.
One stout, out-flung branch, depending from the lower trunkside, soon impeded his progress; indeed, threatened the success of his venture. Fear of dislodging the frailer end of his support prohibited his trying to swing his body around it.
In an almost insupportable pause he decided on a way. With Jack Childress, thus far, there always had been a way.