“She has gone. She started down the mountain for help when Kid went away. I’m so afraid for you, dear! He may be creeping back now––he may be waiting already, close by here, in the darkness. But if he has not heard our voices, he will go first to where you came up, and then to the tent. Keep quiet until I return. Wait; here is cream and egg. Drink it all.”
When he had drained the bowl that she held to his lips, she crept away. Ashton sat still, the warm, soft little body of the sleeping baby in his arms, the pistol in his bandaged right hand. In her excitement Isobel had forgotten his bound fingers. If Gowan had come on him then, he would have put the baby back in under the rock, and faced the puncher’s revolver with a smile. What had he now to live for? He had lost her. She had not yet grasped the baseness of what he had thought and done. As soon as she realized ... And he could never forgive himself.
CHAPTER XXXII
OVER THE BRINK
Isobel came back to him, noiselessly gliding around through the darkness. She set down the bundle she was carrying, and hung blankets over the entrance of the little cave. She then lighted the lantern. He held out his bound hands. She unbound them enough for him to use his fingers, and taking the baby and the pistol, crouched down, with her ear close to the screening blankets, while he exchanged his tattered clothes for those she had brought to him.
There were also his change of boots and a pair of Blake’s gauntlet gloves, into which he was able to force his slender fingers without removing the remaining bandages. Isobel had already bound up into a kind of knapsack the food and clothing and first-aid package that he was to take down to her injured brother. He slung it upon his back, and whispered that he was ready.
She nestled the baby in the warm blankets on which he had lain, wrapped a blanket about the lantern, and led him cautiously down to the brink of the chasm. Dark as was the night about them, it was bright compared 367 with the intense blackness of that profound abyss. The girl caught his arm and shrank back from the edge.
“You will not fall? you are certain you will not fall?” she whispered.