Grady jumped back, frightened by the sudden bound of the swiftly speeding animal.
“Do you know what that means?” asked Bledsoe quietly.
“We started the deer, I suppose,” stammered Grady.
“No. But someone else did—lower down the gorge. We are being trailed, boss. We’ve got to get out of this hole in double-quick time or chance being shot down from behind a rock.”
“This wall is impossible,” exclaimed Grady, his frightened face gazing up the cliff.
Bledsoe was surveying the situation.
“Wait a minute,” he said at last. Then he swung his lariat, the noose of which, going straight to its mark, caught a projecting tree stump full fifty feet above.
“If you can make that,” he added, as he pulled the rope tight, “there’s a ledge running right around and up—see?” He pointed with his finger, tracing a line along the rocky wall. “Now up you go. I’ll hold the rope. It’s dead easy.”
Grady dropped his rifle, and with both hands began to climb. Weighted with the gold in his pockets, he made the ascent slowly and laboriously. But at last he gained the ledge, and scrambling now on hands and knees as he moved further upward and onward he speedily disappeared over the rim of the cliff.
On Bledsoe’s lips was a smile of cold contempt.