They crept among low shrubs and around the bowlders, carefully guarding
every slightest movement lest some rustle of disturbed foliage, or
sound of loosened stone, might draw the fire of those keen watchers.
Nor dared they ignore the close proximity of their own little company,
who, amid such darkness, might naturally suspect them for approaching
savages. Every inch of their progress was attained through tedious
groping, yet the distance to be traversed was short, and Hampton soon
found himself pressing against the uprising precipice. Passing his
fingers along the front, he finally found that narrow ledge which he
had previously located with such patient care, and reaching back, drew
the girl silently upon her feet beside him. Against that background of
dark cliff they might venture to stand erect, the faint glimmer of
reflected light barely sufficient to reveal to each the shadowy outline
of the other.
"Don't move an inch from this spot," he whispered. "It wouldn't be a
square deal, Kid, to leave those poor fellows to their death without
even telling them there's a chance to get out."
She attempted no reply, as he glided noiselessly away, but her face,
could he have seen it, was not devoid of expression. This was an act
of generosity and deliberate courage of the very kind most apt to
appeal to her nature, and within her secret heart there was rapidly
developing a respect for this man, who with such calm assurance won his
own way. He was strong, forceful, brave,--Homeric virtues of real
worth in that hard life which she knew best. All this swept across her
mind in a flash of revelation while she stood alone, her eyes
endeavoring vainly to peer into the gloom. Then, suddenly, that black
curtain was rent by jagged spurts of red and yellow flame. Dazed for
an instant, her heart throbbing wildly to the sharp reports of the
rifles, she shrank cowering back, her fascinated gaze fixed on those
imp-like figures leaping forward from rock to rock. Almost with the
flash and sound Hampton sprang hastily back and gathered her in his
arms.
"Catch hold, Kid, anywhere; only go up, and quick!"
As he thus lifted her she felt the irregularities of rock beneath her
clutching fingers, and scrambled instinctively forward along the narrow
shelf, and then, reaching higher, her groping hands clasped the roots
of a projecting cedar. She retained no longer any memory for Hampton;
her brain was completely terrorized. Inch by inch, foot by foot,
clinging to a fragment of rock here, grasping a slippery branch there,
occasionally helped by encountering a deeper gash in the face of the
precipice, her movements concealed by the scattered cedars, she toiled
feverishly up, led by instinct, like any wild animal desperately driven
by fear, and only partially conscious of the real dread of her terrible
position. The first time she became aware that Hampton was closely
following was when her feet slipped along a naked root, and she would
have plunged headlong into unknown depths had she not come into sudden
contact with his supporting shoulder. Faint and dizzy, and trembling
like the leaf of an aspen, she crept forward onto a somewhat wider
ledge of thin rock, and lay there quivering painfully from head to
foot. A moment of suspense, and he was outstretched beside her,
resting at full length along the very outer edge, his hand closing
tightly over her own.