“Did I hurt you?” he faltered, impulsively laying his hand on her arm.
She shivered and shook off his hand, forcing a gay smile. And they went on together, upward, always upward, her pretty, provocative eyes meeting his at intervals, her heart beating faster, death at her breast.
He was a few yards ahead when he called back to her in a low, warning voice that he had found a path, and she hastened up the rocks to where he stood.
Surely here was a trail winding along the very edge of the ledges, under masses of overhanging rock—some dizzy runway of prehistoric man, perhaps trodden, too, by wolf and panther, and later by the lank mountaineer hunter or smuggler creeping to some eerie unsuspected by any living creature save, perhaps, the silver-headed eagles soaring through the fathomless azure vault above.
Below, the pass lay; but they could see no farther into it at first. However, as they advanced cautiously, clinging to the outjutting cliff, which seemed maliciously striving to push them out into space, by degrees crag and trail turned westward and more of the pass came into view—a wide, smooth cleft in the mountain, curving away toward the north.
A few steps more and the trail ended abruptly in a wide, grassy space set with trees, sloping away gently to the west, chopped off sheer to the east, where it terminated in a mossy shelf overlooking the ravine.
Only a few rods away the dusk of the pass was cut by a glimmer of sunlight; it was the northern entrance.
Something else was glimmering there, too; dozens of dancing points of white fire—sunshine on buckle, button, bit and sabre. And the officer beside her uttered a low, fierce cry and jerked his field glasses free from the case.
“Their cavalry!” he breathed. “The Yankees are entering the pass, so help me God!” And he drew his revolver.
So help him God! Something dark and round flew across his line of vision, curving out into space, dropping, dropping into the depths below. A clattering report, a louder racket as the rocky echoes, crossing and recrossing, struck back at the clamoring cliffs.