CHAPTER XXXIV
RECLAMATION
Even with the mutual assistance that they could give one another, and with the certain knowledge that the descent was possible, the rescuers had no easy task following the trail “broken” by Ashton. Their very numbers prevented them from going down as fast as he had gone. On the other hand, those on the upper part of the life-line could steady their companions over ledges and down the steeper crevices, while the leaders helped the ones who followed by hammering footholds in the rock and at the very worst places driving in picket-pins to hold the extra ropes brought down for the purpose.
Still, Deep Cañon was Deep Cañon––the ladder it offered was a ladder of Titans. Many long hours of waiting passed after the rescuing party disappeared among the shadows less than a third of the way down the steep-sloping precipices, before they came struggling upwards again into view of the anxious watchers on the brink. The sun had circled well over into the western sky.
There was yet a thousand feet for the rescuers to 389 clamber, hauling and pushing up in their midst the heavy body of the injured engineer. All during the first half of the ascent Blake had made the task as easy as he could by the strenuous exertion of the great strength still left in his arms and his sound leg. But at last the bandages that bound his broken leg had chafed in two on the rough ledges; and even his iron nerve had not long been able to withstand the torture of the twisting break.
He now dangled helpless in the sling by which they had secured him. Half the time he was mercifully unconscious; the other half his jaw was set rigid and his lips were compressed to stifle his groans of agony. Whenever possible Ashton climbed beside him, striving to ease the roughness of the ascent.
A full hour before they reached the top, the thin-faced consumptive surgeon arrived from Stockchute with his splints and medical case. Waited upon by Isobel and Genevieve, he was fully recovered from the exertion of his ride when at last the panting rescuers came toiling up to the brink.
Eager hands dragged the unconscious engineer to the top and carried him to where the surgeon sat waiting. A few of the watchers lingered to help the rescuers over the rim; then they, too, hurried away to see if Blake had survived that terrible ascent. For the last two hundred feet he had looked like a dead man. There was no cheering. Deep Cañon had been conquered; 390 but it was yet to be seen whether the victory had not been won at a disastrous cost.
The sheriff and his nine men sank down on the grassy slope, gasping, outspent. Ashton collapsed in their midst. He was more than outspent; he was utterly exhausted. The instant he had seen Blake lifted over the rim-rock, he had given way to the strain of his frightful exertions. When a man sent by Isobel came hurrying to the rescuers with water and coffee, Ashton was unable to move or speak. The man had to hold him up and pour the coffee down his throat.