"You thought you could do it, didn't you?" she said mockingly; "and now I've had to spoil my clothes to get you off that shelf."
"For God's sake, stay where you are! There's nothing you can do for me. The boys have gone round to bring a rope, and until they come you must stay right there!"
Phil, still panting, laughed derisively.
"You're perfectly ridiculous—pinned to a rock like Prometheus—Simeon on his pillar! But it wouldn't be dignified for you to let the boys haul you up by a rope. You'd never live that down. They'll be years getting a rope; and it would be far from comfortable to sit there all night."
While she chaffed she was measuring distances and calculating chances. The shelf which had caught him was the broader part of a long edge of outcrop. Phil beat among the bushes to determine how much was exposed, but the ledge was too narrow for a foothold.
"Please stop there and don't move!" Holton pleaded. "If you break your neck, I'd never forgive myself, and I'd never be forgiven."
Phil laughed her scorn of his fears and began creeping upward again. The situation appealed to her both by reason of its danger and its humor; there was nothing funnier than the idea of Charlie Holton immured on a rock, waiting to be hauled up from the top of the cliff. She meant to extricate him from his difficulties: she had set herself the task; it was like a dare. Her quick eyes searching the rough slope noted a tree between her and the shelf where Holton clung, watching her and continuing his entreaties not to heed him, but to look out for her own safety. Its roots were well planted in an earthy cleft and its substantial air inspired confidence. It had been off the line of his precipitous descent and he had already tried to reach it; but in the cautious tiptoeing to which his efforts were limited by the slight margin of safety afforded by the rock he could not touch it.
"If I swing down from that tree and reach as far as I can, you ought to be able to catch my hand; and if you can I'll pull, and you can make your feet walk pitty-pat up the side."
Her face, aglow from the climb, hung just above him. She had thrown off her hat when she began the ascent and her hair was in disorder. Her eyes were bright with excitement and fun. It was immensely to her liking—this situation: her blood sang with the joy of it. She addressed him with mocking composure.
"It's so easy it isn't right to take the money."