However, almost before the impression came it was gone, and the Indian discovered a figure held between the two rocks. He could not, of course, see anything except that the figure was a woman’s, and that the sunlight had made the hair a bright amber.
Yet, it was so extraordinary to find a human being alone and in such a plight, it is small wonder that the young man remained staring. He was a dreamer also. No man or woman can spend long hours in great open spaces alone with only the wind and the sky and the desert for company without being either a dreamer or a fool. Soon after he began climbing down the sides of the ravine as quickly and as unafraid as another man might descend the rounds of a ladder.
He used both his hands and feet, stepping from one almost invisible projection to another, until he reached the summit of what appeared like a stone chair with two great sides in which Bettina was imprisoned. Then he dropped lightly down to the ledge and stood upright about a foot away from the still figure.
She was not a woman, but a girl; this he saw at once, and she appeared only unconscious. A cut was bleeding where her head must have struck. Yet what could have happened that she could be thus alone?
Several times the young Indian called. No answer came. Then he lifted Bettina and began the ascent of the slope. Another man—not accustomed to the outdoors and not an athlete—could not have accomplished the feat of getting Bettina back on the trail again without assistance. She was slender enough, but tall and at present a dead weight.
Nevertheless the young Indian lifted her across his shoulder and, holding her with one arm, climbed up the way he had come. He was panting and his mouth set with fatigue and determination, however, when he finally brought her to the small plateau where he could lay her down comfortably. It was the place where her loss had been discovered a short time before.
The Indian must have known the locality, for he went away and in a little while came back with water which he held in a giant cactus leaf.
But Bettina did not respond to the cool water on her face, nor to the air, nor her change of position.
Plainly her rescuer was puzzled what to do next. He stood erect a few moments gazing up and down the trail, as if finding it impossible to believe that the girl he had just found had been deserted by her friends. Yet, calling again, he had no answer.
Something must be done; she must be taken to some one who would properly care for her. How else could one know how serious her injury? She appeared to be only stunned by her fall, and yet the cut near her temple might be serious.