“This is a pretty kettle of fish, I must say!” Gus muttered as he heard the last low grumble of the runabout die away up the ascent, proving that the hoboes had indeed abandoned him there to his fate.
He started in to examine his surroundings more carefully than before; but he found very little encouragement. The sheer wall arose for possibly a dozen feet above his head, with not the slightest sign of any projection that might serve him in an endeavor to reach the mountain road where the protecting railing lay.
It is a sudden emergency like this that shows what a fellow is made of. Young Merrivale had certain qualities about him that might be deemed objectionable in the eyes of boys who are ready to give and take. He wanted to be a leader, or not play. In the past, indeed, he had been more or less domineering in his treatment of those with whom he condescended to associate.
He was no coward, and while still burning with indignation toward the pair of rascals who had taken not only the pay money of the quarrymen but his runabout as well, his one thought was to get out of this scrape some way or other, and then follow them. He gritted his teeth as he thought of the glory that would be his could he only overtake the wretches and bring back the stolen property.
If not above, perhaps he might find safety below. It was, of course, a long way down to the bottom of the declivity. He had climbed steeps before, however, where the valuable granite had been blasted from the face of the mountain, leaving great gaps and towering cliffs where even a nimble-footed goat would find it difficult to discover safe footing.
So Gus crawled to the edge of the ledge and looked over.
“Whew! it would take a steeple-jack to make that drop without breaking every bone in his body!” he told himself when he saw how far below lay the rocky base of the precipice, and marked the lack of friendly crevices and protuberances.
With his teeth still firmly pressed together, he forced himself to examine every foot of the surface of the hard rock as far as it could be seen from his aerie. “If my rope were only two or three times as long as it is, I could see where I might make the riffle,” he went on to say, disconsolately, “but with only ten or twelve feet to depend on, it looks mighty slim.”
Crawling along the ledge, he tried to discover more hopeful signs from other vantage points, but with little success. A weak boy would have given it up then and there, and crouching on the shelf waited for some one whose attention he could attract, to come along the road far below. Apparently, young Merrivale was not built that way. The stubborn streak was in evidence as shown by his continued activity. He was positively determined to take great chances, if only he could discover the spot where a promising start might be made.
“I’ve got to be careful,” he told himself several times, “because once I break away from up here there’s no coming back again. And it strikes me I’d feel like a fly on a window pane if I was flattened out against that rock down there, and no chance to go up or down. Ugh! this ledge is better than nothing at all. And if I made a miss, there’d be a heap of work for old Doctor Kane of Oakvale. So perhaps I ought to go slow, and not jump from the frying pan into the fire.”