“Son, I got an idee—ef she don’t get away while I’m picketin’ her down,” said Big John. “You git up thar and hang my lariat honda over that point of rock, sabe, an’ then we’ll run yore lariat through the honda and snake up the next pole by one of the hosses.”
He got both lariats up from camp while Sid waited. Presently he returned, to cast it up with the sure whirling pitch of the born rope artist. Sid snatched it in and hauled his own up by the end of the other. Then he coiled both, attached them to his belt and started up the next cleft. The very pockets in the rock where feet of the ancient log ladders used to rest were easy to pick out as he climbed. What men had done a man could do! By the time he had everything fixed and the honda, or brass eye of the lariat, hung with the other rove through it, Big John was below with a horse and a fresh pole. It came snaking up as the cowman led the horse away, hauling on the lower end by the lariat tied to a cinch strap above the pony’s back.
Sid set the pole and climbed higher to the next ledge so that they could repeat the maneuver with a third pole. This was the limit for that horse-hoisting stunt, however, for he was now up over eighty feet and there was not rope enough in camp to double through the next honda. Big John yelled up as he tied on the fourth pole and then he led the horse back to graze again.
In a few minutes Sid saw him climbing up below him. He had no fear of height himself. That all belongs to the tenderfoot aloft for the first time. It attacks man in a sickening sort of stage fright at first, whether on cliff, high building, or the upper rigging of a ship. After a time familiarity wears it off and in its place there comes a cheerfulness over the immense outlook, the height and the distant scenery of it all; a joyous sense of freedom that must be part of the bird’s outlook on life. He waited for Big John on the ledge, looking about him interestedly. It was narrow but not dangerous up here. An old woman might have wanted a rail fence or something, he thought, but things were done on such a huge scale on this cliff that this very ledge that looked from below like a mere trace proved up here to be nearly three feet wide. Plenty!—Thousands! as the facetious Big John would have said.
Presently that cheerful son of Montana arrived, breathing heavily but entirely at ease. “Waal, son, it ain’t goin’ to freeze up an’ snow on our scheme jest yit! Tail on to this yere lariat and we’ll yank up another pole.”
They hauled away on the long rope which the cowman had tied to the butt of the fourth pole while down there. It weighed perhaps fifty pounds—nothing at all to mountain men! After a period of grunting effort the butt end came up over the ledge and the pole was gathered in and laid lengthwise. They then started on to prospect for the next fissure.
“Gosh durn it, how come, son? Hyar be stone steps leadin’ up back hyar, or you can steal my hoss!” came back Big John’s voice in the lead as they rounded the face of the huge pinnacle of rock. Sid hurried to catch up. That simplified matters a whole lot!
“Look yonder, John!” he cried excitedly, as they climbed up the row of stone pockets, “one more pole finishes us! See that hole in the wall across the crevasse?”
“Sho’ I do! But Sid, you ought to show some respect for the naked truth, son—which-same means we’re busted! Yore hole’s across a no-bottomed chasm, hombre, an’ we ain’t flies nor yit eagles, nohow!”
Sid climbed more notched steps that led up over a smooth billow of rock and then eyed the hole opposite, measuring the distance carefully. Here, evidently, began those scoured-out caves and tunnels in the living rock which led up to the cavate dwelling. There had been a log bridge across here once, but it had long since rotted through and perished.