He did not await a reply but, slipping unsteadily along the icy crust, he hurried down the cañon in the general direction of Leslie’s voice, yelling intermittently, "Coming–here I am! Where are you, Less?"
As he came to the cliff over which he had been lowered into the cañon, he heard Leslie’s voice again, still curiously muffled, although evidently only a little way in advance. It seemed to rise from beneath the ground.
"Hold on, Ross. Don’t come fast. I’ve fallen through among the willows."
Cautiously Ross advanced toward the voice, testing the strength of the crust at every step until it gave under the stamping of his heel. Then he stopped and found himself looking down a section of shelving crust into a hole filled with loose snow, willow tops–and Leslie.
"Great guns!" cried Ross. "What are you doing in there?"
Leslie attempted to respond nonchalantly, but his face was nearly as white as the bed of snow he was occupying, and his teeth chattered with cold and fright.
"I’ve been flopping around here for half an hour yelling," he explained jerkily, "and have only managed to sink deeper and break off more crust and more willow tops."
"Rub your nose and face the next thing you do," advised Ross immediately, "or you’ll be a mass of frost bite."
He rubbed his own nose meditatively. Then grasping the axe he cried cheerfully, "Hold the fort a while longer down there, Less, and relief will arrive. See here! I hadn’t finished the wood and I ran off with the axe. Now I’ll skiddoo and cut a pole and help you out. And don’t forget to rub your face!"
Laboriously and fearfully–lest he meet with Leslie’s fate–Ross climbed the side of the mountain until he stood among the branches of a sturdy spruce, the depth of snow raising him to that height. Cutting and trimming a long limb, he dragged it back to the cañon. Projecting one end over the hole he sat hard on the other. Then Leslie, by jumping and seizing the projecting end, and bracing against the sloping sheet of crust, climbed, breathless but relieved, to the surface of the snow.