“There’s a place where the wall slopes back––but steep, oh, so steep! Yet it is barely possible––” The girl’s voice sank, and she glanced about at Gowan. “It is just this side of where more than five thousand sheep were driven over into the cañon. That was four 343 years ago. I have never since been able to go near the place.”
“Tom said that he rode all along the cañon for miles. You say it may be possible to climb up at that place. He must have seen it, and he has remembered it.”
“Then you think––?”
“I know that if it is possible for anyone to climb the wall, Tom will climb it––and he will bring up Lafayette with him.”
“Dear Genevieve! You are so strong! so full of hope!”
“Not hope, dear. It is trust. I know Tom better than you. That is all.”
“Another flash!” cried Isobel. “So soon, yet all that long way from the last! They are traveling far faster!”
“Yes, they have finished with the levels,” divined Genevieve. “We must hasten.”
Isobel called the news to the silent puncher, and all moved along to overtake the hurrying fugitives below. Though both parties went so much faster, Blake’s frequent shots kept the anxious watchers above in closer touch than at any time before.
At last they came to that Cyclopean ladder of precipices, rising one above the other in narrow steps, and all inclined at a giddy pitch far steeper than any house roof. Yet for a long way down them the field glasses 344 showed their surfaces wrinkled with shelves and projecting ledges and creased with faults and crevices.