He heard the doctor above and Mr. Stone below encouraging Dumplin’, too, and he knew it was up to him.
“Some old rope, Dumplin’, if it can hold you that way,” he shouted. “Come on, now, steady. I’ll kick the steps out bigger so’s they won’t break again.”
He kicked and packed them vigorously as he descended, and soon Mr. Stone was at the bottom, and he was within fifteen feet of it. Mr. Stone asked them to stop for a minute while he got out of the rope and went fifty feet out on the traverse, and took a movie of the final stages of the descent.
When he got back, Dumplin’ was sitting on the snow, very pale, but grinning as cheerfully as he could.
“Rope kind of yanked me under the arms,” he said. “But I’m all right. I won’t be so dizzy now we’re down. I couldn’t see very well, and I guess I didn’t get my foot far enough in on the step. It was looking down got my goat.”
The doctor and his father patted his back, and once more shifted positions on the rope.
“Once we get across those chutes, and it’s plain sailing,” Uncle Billy said, as he prepared to start out across the big snow-field, on the little path of steps he had cut that morning. Bennie noticed that there was a red ring around his left hand, and realized that he had seized the rope with a lightning twist when Dumplin’ slipped, and caught the weight that way, before the yank came on his body, and before Dumplin’ could get up speed.
“He’s some quick thinker,” Bennie reflected. “Gee, I guess you have to be, in this game.”
They were now out on the big traverse. Their morning steps were melted out deeper and larger, and they made fairly rapid progress toward the first chute. Nothing had come down it while they were approaching, and nothing came as the doctor crossed. But, once on the other side, he took his large jack-knife from his pocket, opened it, and held it ready to cut the rope as the others crossed, for if something should come down large enough to stick up above the sides while the rope was stretched across the chute, it might pull them all down with it. Nothing at all happened, however, either here or in the second big chute. Once across the latter, Uncle Billy gave a sigh of relief.
“Well, that’s over!” he said. “Now we have plain sailing.”