CHAPTER XXII
THE PATH DOWN THE CLIFF
In the thick darkness half way between midnight and the first glimmerof the new day Drennen awoke. That he must silence Sefton before Maxcame up with him was the thought awaking with him. He was fullyconscious of his purpose before he knew what it was that had awakenedhim.
Quite close to him was the noise of breaking brush and snapping twigs.Evidently one of the pack animals had broken its tie-rope. He liftedhimself upon his elbow, frowning into the darkness. The horse was notten feet from him and yet it was hard to distinguish that darker blotin the darkness which bespoke the brute's body.
"What is it?"
It was the voice of Kootanie George from the big Canadian's bed somefifty feet away. It was the first time George had spoken to Drennen.Drennen answered quietly:
"One of the horses has broken his rope."
Knowing that the animal might wander back along the trail and cause nolittle delay in the morning, Drennen slipped on his boots and went totie him. The horse, seeing where the man could not, drew back towardthe cliffs. Drennen, led by the noise of breaking underbrush, at lastwas enabled to make out distinctly the looming form in a littleclearing. Stooping swiftly, through a random clutch at the ground, hewas lucky enough to seize the end of the broken rope.
"It's Black Ben," he thought. "Max's horse."
A sudden temptation came to him. Puzzling it over he led the horseslowly toward the grassy flat under the cliffs where the others weretethered. Suppose that he turned Max's horse loose? And Kootanie's?And that he should head them back along the trail? Not a pretty trickto play, but was now the time for nicety? It would mean delay, not forDrennen, but for Kootanie and Max . . . it might mean the opportunityhe wanted, to come up with Sefton before the others.
He passed close to where George lay. The Canadian had again drawn uphis blanket and was going back to sleep. The others were sleeping. Itwas too dark for them to see what he was doing. Too dark for him tomore than make out the forms of the other horses when he came to theflat under the cliffs. And by that time he had made up his mind; hewould take advantage of whatever came to his hand and ask no questions;he would find George's pack animal in a moment and would then lead thetwo of them around the camp and turn them loose.
Had he come to George's horse first he would have done so. But itchanced that the first horse across whose tether he tripped was a bigblack animal with the white strip from below the ears to the nostrilsshowing in the gloom to which Drennen's eyes were accustomed now. Thiswas Lieutenant Max's horse, Black Ben! Then the horse he wasleading . . .
He swung about swiftly, gathering up the slackened rope, coming closeto the horse what had awakened him. It was like Black Ben, easily tobe mistaken even in a better light than this . . . but it was notGeorge's horse nor yet Max's. . . .
"A strange horse, here!" was his swift thought. "Whose?"
He ran his hands along the big brute's back. There was no saddle.About the neck only a knotted rope. His hands ran on to the draggingend of the rope. The strands were rough there, unequal, bespeaking atether snapped. He noted now, too, that the rope was damp and a littlemuddy.
"He's come down the trail from the north. We are close to Sefton'scamp."
From the north because there was no place which Drennen rememberedhaving passed during the end of the day where a horse could muddy adragging rope. The lake shore was sand and gravel. And, before he hadgone to bed that night, he had seen a straggling stream which a littlefurther on ran across the morrow's trail, making shallow ponds in thegrass, the banks oozy mud.
Tying the strange horse swiftly, Drennen went back to his bed. Hefound his rifle and cartridge belt, filled his pockets hit or miss fromhis food pack, and, making no noise, returned to the flat. Againleading the strange horse he pushed on, up trail, toward the muddybrook.
Too dark to see more than the lowering mass of trees, the blackness ofthe ground looking a bottomless pit under foot, the wall of cliffsstanding up against the stars. But slowly he could find his way to thecreek, across, and along the lake shore.
Again and again he stumbled against a boulder or tree trunk or clump ofbushes. He cursed his eyes for fools, drew back and around theobstacle and pushed on. He would make little speed this way, but theremight arise the situation in which every moment would be golden.
After a little an inspiration came to him and he acted upon it swiftly.He let the rope out through his fingers and holding it at the brokenend drove the horse on ahead of him, calculating upon the fact that itcould see even if he could not, and having been over the trail oncewould travel it again in the darkness.
So Drennen made his way northward. Now he was making better time,perhaps a couple of miles an hour. By dawn he would be several milesahead of the others, and then he could travel more rapidly.
But, before the dawn came, he must stop. He had come under the cliffswhich stood tall and bleakly forbidding at the upper end of the lake.The horse came to a dead standstill. If there were a way up here, atrail through the cliffs, the animal seemed to have no knowledge of itand Drennen's blind groping could not discover it.
It was only through the mastery of a strong will, long seasoned anddrilled, that Drennen could force himself at last to sit down and waitthe coming of the light. His soul was in turmoil. His mind was filledwith broken fancies, tortured visions. In him the simplicity of anormal existence had been phantastically twisted into complication.Before him were Sefton and Lemarc and Garcia . . . and Ygerne Bellaire.Behind him were George and Ernestine with their warped lives, Sothernand Max with their souls upon the verge of convulsion. Max, young andstraightforward, his sky clear to the star of his duty, was sleeping inignorance, while if he but knew he would be torn a thousand ways. Andit seemed to Drennen that the restless thing in each of these lives,behind him and in front of him, raised its hissing head to dart venominto his own breast, to make for unrest and doubt there.
At last the objects about him were slowly restored to their ownindividual forms from the void of the night. The trees separated, theexpanse of the lake grew grey and liquid, the cliffs showed theirancient battle scars. And the trodden earth held fresh and plain thetrail he sought.
Leading the horse again, he climbed up from the level of the laketoward the cliff tops. The trail, hazardous enough at all times,looking now and then impossible, wound and twisted among the boulders,snaked its way into a narrow gorge, mounted along a bit of bench landclinging like a shelf to the mountain side, and in an hour's timebrought him to the top.
Now the day was full upon him. Behind and below lay the lake he hadjust quitted. He could make out a plume of smoke where the impatienceof Max and George would be bestirring Itself. Ahead and below lay RedDeer Lake, a thousand dizzy feet down, seeming impossible ofachievement from where Drennen stood. He pushed a stone over the rockswith his boot. He saw it leap outward and drop, plummet wise, saw thewhite spray of the lake leap upward as the stone plunged into the water.
Drennen had turned the horse loose. From the hog's-back upon which hestood he could look down into a little valley lying to the eastward andcould make out in it two more pack animals, tethered. He headed thisone down the trail and then turned his eyes back toward Red Deer Lakeand, across it, to the cliffs beyond. For there he had seen a secondplume of smoke.
It seemed to him then that a man must have wings to reach that otherline of cliffs, on the far side of the lake, from which the smoke wasclimbing upward. Everywhere the sheer precipices marched up to the rimof the blue laughter of the water below him, so that one might believethat neither man nor four-footed denizen of the forestland could comehere to drink; that only the birds, dropping with folded wings, couldvisit its shore. But others had been here before him; and surely itwas their smoke which curled upward from the far cliffs. If they hadfound a way to go on on foot, leaving their horses here, then he couldfind it. And he must find it quickly . . . before Max and George.
First he noted the location of the smoke toward which he sought to go,so that he would not miss it. Nature aided him, making the spotdistinctive. Everywhere the cliffs were barren, just rock and morerock, a jumble of great boulders strewn along sheer precipices,everywhere save alone in this one spot. But there was a scant tableland, and from it a small grove of pines rose high in the blue of thebrightening sky, their gnarled limbs still and sturdy. It was abovethis single noteworthy clump of ancient boled trees to be seen uponthese inhospitable heights that the thin bluish smoke arose.
To Drennen, frowning across the gulf separating him and his quarry,there seemed but one conceivable reason why a human being should havesought to win a way to that rocky aerie. From its nature it was allbut unscalable; from its position it commanded in limitless, sweepingview all possible paths of approach. Did Sefton's party seek a hidingplace where defence even against great numbers would be a simplematter, this nest upon the cliff tops was the ideal spot.
Thus Drennen answered the riddle. But there were other riddles whichhe could not answer and which he gave over. Why had the horses beenleft where they would be found so readily? Why that careless beaconsmoke where no man could fail to see it?
Max would see it and he would be hurrying, swifter than Drennen hadcome because now it was daylight. With the need of haste crying in hisears Drennen experienced the slipping by of slow hours with nothingaccomplished. Back and forth along the edge of the cliffs he searchedeagerly, like some great, gaunt questing hound, baffled by a coldtrack. Sefton and those with him had come here, had found the waydown, had gained the far side two miles away across the lake. They hadgone before, so he knew that he could come after. But he grew feverishover the delay, thinking as much of Max behind as of Sefton in front.
Again and again he thought that he had found the way down only to bedriven back and up when he had made a few perilous feet downward alongthe beetling fall of rock. He sought tracks and found nothing; therewas nothing but hard rock here which kept no impress less than that ofthe tread of the passing centuries. He even went down into the littlevalley where the horses were, hoping that through some deep cleft chasmthe trail led circuitously to the lake shore. But he came back, againbaffled, again hurrying with the certainty upon him that Max, too, washurrying.
The sun was three hours high when Drennen found what he sought. Withthe keen joy at the discovery there came deep wonder. It was theapproach to the lake; but the wonder arose from the unexpected natureof the path itself. He had passed further and further north along thecliffs until a couple of miles lay between him and the spot where thislatest quest had begun. And he came now to a cleft in the rocks. Oneach hand the cliffs fell apart so that at the top the chasm measuredperhaps ten or twelve feet. The chasm narrowed fifty feet below untilit formed a great V. Below that Drennen could not see until he hadmade his precarious way down into the cut. And when he had come towhat had appeared from above to be the closed angle of the V he foundthe rest of the way open to him. And the wonder arose from the obviousfact that there were many rude steps not nature-made but man-made.There were hand-holds scooped out here and there in the rock;foot-holds chiselled rudely; and all bore the mark of no little age.Grass grew scantily in the cracks; a young cedar, hardy, with crookedroots like the claws of a monster, stood in one of the deeper scoopedhollows; the debris fallen into the man-made steps had accumulatedthrough the generations. In one of these places, when he had gonedownward a hundred feet, he came to a little space of soft soil whichheld the trampled impress of boots.
Now, his rifle slung to his back, his fingers gripping at cracks andseams and little knobs of stone, he made what speed he could. The wayhe followed led along a long, horizontal fissure for a space, thendipped dangerously near the perpendicular, then slanted off so that thedanger was less, greater speed possible. He did not look down to thelake, fearing the dizziness which might lay hold of him and whip himfrom the face of the cliffs like a fly caught in a rush of wind.
The thought entered his mind, "Ygerne Bellaire had gone on here beforehim!" He pictured her confident bearing as she climbed down, hercapable hands clinging to the rocks, her fearless eyes as she lookeddown at the blue glint of the lake a thousand feet below, the red curveof her lips as she smiled her contempt of the danger. Be she what shemight, Ygerne Bellaire was not the coward he had once thought all women.
He grew angry with himself for harbouring a thought into which a tingeof admiration for her entered. He was coming up with her soon; hesneered at himself and at her and crept on downward.
Again and again the way looked impossible; again and again he found thescooped-out handhold which carried him on. And yet it was another twohours before he had dropped the last ten feet to the narrow, pebblyshore of Red Deer Lake.
Now there would be no more lost time, no hesitation in finding the pathhe must follow. For here, at the marge, were the tracks of those whohad gone before. And there was but one way these could lead. For uponthe left hand the cliffs came down to the water and there was no path;upon the right there was a six-foot strip of uneven beach.
The sudden sound of a voice shouting dropped down to him. Jerking hishead up he made out the form of Lieutenant Max at the top of thisdevil's stairway down which he had just come. Drennen laughed shortlyand turned northward along the lake shore. He had lost time but hewould lose no more. He still had two hours the best of it; it wouldtake Max fully that long to make the descent.
"When he comes up with me," was Drennen's quick thought, "my work willhave been done!"
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