As she stood in the sunpour, her cheeks flushed with exercise, he could see that her spirit courted adventure.
"I'm sure I must be," she answered with a smile adorable. "I believe I could do the Matterhorn to-day."
Well up on the shoulder of the ridge they stopped to breathe. The distant noise of falling water came faintly to them.
"We're too far to the left—must have followed the wrong spur," Elliot explained. "Probably we can cut across the face of the mountain."
Presently they came to an impasse. The gulch between the two spurs terminated in a rock wall that fell almost sheer for two hundred feet.
The color in the cheeks beneath the eager eyes of the girl was warm. "Let's try it," she begged.
The young man had noticed that she was as sure-footed as a mountain goat and that she could stand on the edge of a precipice without dizziness. The surface of the wall was broken. What it might be beyond he could not tell, but the first fifty feet was a bit of attractive and not too difficult rock traverse.
Now and again he made a suggestion to the young woman following him, but for the most part he trusted her to choose her own foot and hand holds. Her delicacy was silken strong. If she was slender, she was yet deep-bosomed. The movements of the girl were as certain as those of an experienced mountaineer.
The way grew more difficult. They had been following a ledge that narrowed till it ran out. Jutting knobs of feldspar and stunted shrubs growing from crevices offered toe-grips instead of the even foothold of the rock shelf. As Gordon looked down at the dizzy fall beneath them his judgment told him they had better go back. He said as much to his companion.
The smile she flashed at him was delightfully provocative. It served to point the figure she borrowed from Gwen. "So you think I'm a 'fraid-cat, Mr. Elliot?"