"Yer say you've made the trip wunst. If yer have, yer kin do it again.
I'm askin' yer fer the last time."
The boy shivered, but his jaw set.
"I don't give a damn fer you, Dan Brennan," he returned half angrily, "but I reckon that might be the girl down thar, an' I'll risk it fer her."
"You'll go then?"
"Sure; didn't I just tell you so?"
Brennan wheeled about.
"Give him his gun, Jim, and the belt," he commanded briefly. "I don't send no man into a fracas like this unless he's heeled. Leave yer coats here, an' take it slow. Both of yer ready?"
Not until his dying day will Westcott ever forget the moment he hung dangling over the edge of that pit, following Moore who had disappeared, and felt gingerly in the darkness for the narrow rock ledge below. The young miner possessed imagination, and could not drive from memory the mental picture of those depths beneath; the horror was like a nightmare, and yet the one dominant thought was not of an awful death, of falling headlong, to be crushed shapeless hundreds of feet below. This dread was there, an intense agony at first, but beyond it arose the more important thought of what would become of her if he failed to attain the bottom of that cliff alive. Yet this was the very thing which steadied him, and brought back his courage.
At best they could only creep, feeling a way blindly from crag to crag, clinging desperately to every projection, never venturing even the slightest movement until either hand or loot found solid support. Moore led, his boyish recklessness and knowledge of the way, giving him an advantage. Westcott followed, keeping as close as possible, endeavouring to shape his own efforts in accordance with the dimly outlined form below; while Brennan, short-legged and stout, probably had the hardest task of all in bringing up the rear.
No one spoke, except as occasionally Moore sent back a brief whisper of warning at some spot of unusual danger, but they could hear each other's laboured breathing, the brushing of their clothing against the surface of the rock, the scraping of their feet, and occasionally the faint tinkle of a small stone, dislodged by their passage and striking far below. There was nothing but intense blackness down there—a hideous chasm of death clutching at them; the houses, the men, the whole valley was completely swallowed in the night.