He rolled over on his face in his anguish. Below him the cliff dropped away for more than a hundred feet to a jumble of rock. A few yards of eroded eminences, and then the rushing torrent of the river. There lay peace—forgetfulness—an end of the struggle. He lay peering down into it with misty eyes—wondering.
But Cockney Aikens' self-condemnation was too deep for that. His sin was too great for such a simple ending. His destiny—his punishment—was to live until God cried quits and gave him happy release. Only addled cowards thought thus to escape the penalty of their misdeeds.
He clambered hastily to his feet and moved to where a wide ledge lay beneath him, cutting him off from the sheer drop to the river bottom. He was too weak just then to fight temptation, and he fled from it.
Then he saw Isabel Bulkeley. She was seated on the ledge, screened, except from above, by the fallen rubble. Hammer and chisel and whisk lay at her feet. Her hand supported her chin, and her eyes were fixed on the river below. She, too, was sad. Cockney, sensitive to the suffering of mankind, felt it in every line of her figure.
Presently he saw her start and raise her head as if listening. The next instant she had seized her chisel and was hammering at the rock at her feet.
Around the face of the cliff only a few yards away came Dakota Fraley, Winchester strapped over his shoulder.
* * * * *
Stamford wound his way slowly from before the hidden valley, along the rocky lip of the Red Deer canyon. His arms and legs ached, and his mind was wearier still, but he crept carefully along like a conspirator. He knew that somewhere farther down the river he would find the Bulkeleys; he was thankful that that day they had chosen the south side for their explorations.
With the thought came another: his days with Isabel Bulkeley were over—he might never see her again. Slow as was his progress in the roughness of the way and the care of his advance, he was in no hurry. So long as he was away by nightfall he would be satisfied—the longer it was delayed, the better. He settled himself in the comfortable hollow of a rock.
A man burst from the prairies above, far ahead of him, leaped to the cover of the upper rocks, and in one swift glance swept the cliff below. With scarcely an instant's pause he dropped into a crevice, and Stamford could see him working a perilous but rapid descent with back and hands and knees. Reaching a ledge, he began to leap downward from rock to rock like a goat, swinging himself by his arms, unhesitating, sure-footed.