Ross, obsessed by one idea, raised his voice: "Miller–Weston!" he yelled frantically. "I’m here–below here! Where are you?"
But the wind swooped down on him, seized his words and bore them down the cañon. Then it suddenly died away, and again the snow fell quietly, mistily, and Ross, looking up, saw, as in a nightmare, a rope dangling across the face of the cliff. In bewildered joyousness he pressed his hand against his eyes and looked again.
"It’s there!" he cried, "but it certainly wasn’t ten minutes ago. That’s the queerest–I know I saw straight before––"
He opened his lips to call again, but the call was checked by the discovery of a man half-way down the cliff, creeping along on what looked to be a thread of snow fastened diagonally across the dark surface of the rock, but which Ross at once recognized as the narrow ledge he himself had trod only three days before. Slowly the figure was progressing, its feet kicking away the snow lodged on the ledge, its hands clinging to the bare face of the cliff. Then, faintly into the lull of the storm a nervous voice floated down to Ross from the thread-like path.
"I’m almost down, I guess, Miller. Hope I can get to the cabin before another squall strikes us."
Then, from the top of the cliff, the barely distinguishable words behind the veil of falling snow, "All right. Remember you’ll find Doc not half a mile straight ahead. The cabin’s on the right, as I’ve told ye. It’s above a bunch of seven spruces. Ye won’t need yer snow-shoes–crust’ll hold down there."
Ross waited to hear no more. "Leslie!" he yelled joyously. "Ho, Leslie! I’m down here. Come on! Hurray for that rope again!"
But even as the hurray ascended the side of the cliff, so did the rope. Snakily, jerkily, the knotted end traveled upward until it disappeared in the cloud of snow that hid the mountain tops.
From this cloud came a faint and far-away voice: "Good luck t’ ye! Tell Doc ye’re in the same boat as he is. He’ll savvy!"