It was an impregnable stronghold. No one could get in from the rear, and the place could not be rushed from the front—the ascent was too steep and slippery and the entrance too narrow. If Tim were determined to stay there and perish with cold, it appeared to me that nobody could do anything to prevent him.
One by one the pursuers joined me before the entrance, when Mrs. Donovan, who was among the last to arrive, advanced as near as she could without getting into the water, and besought her errant husband to come down.
But Tim was deaf to entreaty; all the blandishments of his anxious wife were without effect, and if she could not get him to come down it appeared as though nobody could.
Tim, though, was a popular young fellow, and it was not in the nature of a Colorado miner, or of an Irishman either—for they hold together like burrs in a horse's tail—to desert a comrade in distress. So, Mrs. Donovan having failed, there stepped to the front a short, thick-set, red-haired man, Mike O'Brien by name, Tim's partner and particular crony, who, talking pleasantly and naturally to him, as though his friend were quite sane and rational, stepped into the water and waded carefully up the steep slope.
"How are ye, Tim, me boy?" said he, with off-hand cordiality. "It's glad I am to see ye out again. It's me birthday to-day, Tim; I'm having a bit of a supper at home an' I come up to ask ye——"
Whack! came the stone from Tim's hand, breaking to pieces against the rocky wall within an inch of Mike's head. The invitation was declined.
Mike himself, in his effort to dodge the missile, missed his footing, fell on his back, and in a series of dislocating bumps was swept down the "steps" to the starting place, wet, as he declared, right through to his bones.
Up to this time the demented man had kept silence, but on seeing Mike go tumbling down-stream, he shook his fist after him and cried out:
"Come back and try again, ye devouring baste! Come on, the whole pack of yez! Don't stand there howling, ye cowardly curs; come up and get me out—if ye dare!"