Elliot took off his shoes and turned toward the traverse.
"Think I'll see if I can cross to that stairway. You had better wait here, Miss O'Neill, until we find out if it can be done."
His manner was casual, his voice studiously light.
Sheba looked across the cliff and down to the boulder bed two hundred feet below. "You can never do it in the world. Isn't there another way up?"
"No. The wall above us slopes out. I've got to cross to the stairway. If I make it I'm going to get a rope."
"Do you mean you're going back to town for one?"
"Yes."
Her eyes fastened to his in a long, unspoken question. She read the answer. He was afraid to have her try the trough again. To get back to town by way of their roundabout ascent would waste time. If he was going to rescue her before night, he must take the shortest cut, and that was across the face of the sheer cliff. For the first time she understood how serious was their plight.
"We can go back together by the trough, can't we?" But even as she asked, her heart sank at the thought of facing again that dizzy height. The moment of horror when she had thought herself lost had shaken her nerve.
"It would be difficult."