“I cannot fall,” he answered with calm conviction. “He needs me. I am going down to him. Besides, it will be easier with the lantern than if I could see below.”
“Do not uncover the light until you are down over the edge.––Wait!”
She stooped to knot the rope that he had brought up from the depths, to the lariats with which he had been dragged up the last ledges. She looped the end about his waist.
“There,” she said. “I shall at least be able to help you down the first fifty yards.”
“God bless you and keep you! Good-by!” he murmured in a choking voice, and he hastily crept down to slip over the first ledge of that night-shrouded Cyclopean ladder.
“Lafe!” she whispered. “Surely you do not mean to go without first telling me––I cannot let you go until––If you should fall! Wait, dearest! Kiss me––tell me that you––Oh, if you should fall!”
“I will not fall; I cannot. Good-by!”
The dim white blotch of his face disappeared below the verge. The line jerked through the girl’s hands. 368 She clutched it with frantic strength and flung herself back with her feet braced against a point of rock. After a moment of tense straining, the rope slackened, and his voice came up to her over the ledge: “Pay out, please. It’s all right. I’ve found a crevice.”
She eased off on the line a few inches at a time, but always keeping it taut and always holding herself braced for a sudden jerk. At last the end came into her hand. She had to lie out on the rim-rock and call down to him. He called back in a tone of quiet assurance. The line slackened. He had cast it loose. The lantern glowed out in the blackness and showed him standing on a narrow shelf.
As Isobel bent lower to gaze at him, a frightful scream rang out above the booming of the cañon. It was a shriek such as a woman would utter in mortal fear. The girl drew back from the verge, her hair stiffening with horror. Could it be possible that Genevieve had lost her way and was wandering back to camp, and that Gowan––