Terror lent wings to his feet. In a few moments he was beyond the outskirts of the camp. Even here, fierce in his energy, he bounded upward, from rock to rock, until he reached the steep jumble of talus where swift progress was impossible. Then with hands and feet working in unison, as if he had been an ape, he climbed steadily.
From the top of the first rocky slope he gazed back fearfully. Yes, men were pursuing him, strung out along the road of the mining camp; and among the last was a tall, black-coated, bareheaded man that Adam took to be Collishaw. This pursuer was staggering along, flinging his arms.
Adam headed straight up the ascent. Picacho loomed to the right, a colossal buttress of red rock, wild and ragged and rugged. But the ascent that had looked so short and easy—how long and steep! Every shadow was a lie, every space of slope in the sunlight hid the truth of its width. Sweat poured from his hot body. He burned. His breath came in labored bursts. A painful stab in his side spread and swelled to the whole region of his breast. He could hear the mighty throb of his heart, and he could hear it in another way—a deep muffled throb through his ears.
At last he reached the height of the slope where it ended under a wall of rock, the backbone of that ridge, bare and jagged, with no loose shale on its almost perpendicular side. Here it took hard labor of hand and foot to climb and zigzag and pull himself up. Here he fell exhausted.
But the convulsion was short lived. His will power was supreme and his endurance had not been permanently disabled. He crawled before he could walk, and when he recovered enough to stagger erect he plodded on, invincible in his spirit to escape.
From this height, which was a foothill to the great peak, he got his bearings and started down.
“They can’t—trail me—here,” he whispered, hoarsely, as he looked back with the eyes of a fugitive. “And—down there—I’ll keep off the road.”
After that brief moment of reasoning he became once more victim to fear and desperate passion to hurry. He had escaped, his pursuers could not see him now, he could hide, the descent was tortuous; yet these apparent facts, favorable as they were, could not save him. Adam pushed on, gaining strength as he recovered breath. As his direction led him downhill, he went swiftly, sometimes at a rapid walk, again sliding down here and rushing there, and at other places he stepped from rock to rock, like a balancing rope walker.
The descent here appeared to be a long, even slant of broken rocks, close together like cobblestones in a street, and of a dark-bronze hue. They shone as if they had been varnished. And a closer glance showed Adam the many reddish tints of bisnagi cactus growing in the cracks between the stones.
His misgivings were soon verified. He had to descend here, for the afternoon was far gone, and whatever the labor and pain, he must reach the road before dark. The rocks were sharp, uneven, and as slippery as if they had been wet. At the very outset Adam slipped, and, falling with both hands forward, he thrust them into a cactus. The pain stung, and when he had to pull hard to free himself from the thorns, it was as if his hands had been nailed. He could not repress moans as he tried to pull out the thorns with his teeth. They stuck tight. The blood ran in little streams. But he limped on, down the black slope.