Out of the Depths

by Bennet, Robert Ames

  By setting wedge-shaped stones in the top of the cleft rock and prying with the crowbar, Gowan had gradually canted the top of the loose outer bowlder towards the edge of the precipice. It had only to topple forward in order to plunge down the cañon wall. He was working as silently as he could, but with a fierce eagerness that caused an occasional slip of the crowbar on the rock.

  Although the great block of stone weighed over two tons, its base was small and rounded, and the mass behind it gave him leverage for his bar. Every inch that he pried it forward, the stones slipped farther down into the widening crack and held the vantage he had gained. Already the bowlder had been pushed out at the top many inches. It was almost balanced. The time had come to see if he could not pry it over with a single heave.

  He did not propose to fall over after the rock. He turned his face to the brink, set the end of the bar in the crevice, and braced himself to heave backwards on the outer end. He put his weight on it and pulled. He could feel the rock give––the top was moving outward. A little more, and it must topple over.

  Close behind him spoke a voice so hoarse and low-pitched with horror that it sounded like a man’s––“Drop that bar! drop it!”

  With the swiftness of a wolf, he bounded sideways along the rim-rock. In the same lightning movement, he whirled face about and whipped his Colt’s from its holster. His finger was crooking against the trigger before he saw who it was that confronted him. The hammer fell in the same instant that he twitched the muzzle up and sideways. The heavy bullet scorched the girl’s cheek.

  Above the crashing report rose a wild cry, “Miss Chuckie––God!”

  Through the blinding, stinging powder-smoke she saw him stagger backwards as if to flee from what he thought he had done. His foot went down over the sharp edge. He flung up his hands and dropped into the abyss.

  She did not shriek. She could not. Her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. Her heart stopped beating. She crumpled down and lay gasping. But the fascination of horror spurred her to struggle to her knees and creep over to peer down from the place where he had fallen.

  Beneath her was only blank, utter darkness. No sound came up out of the deep except only that ceaseless reverberation of the hidden river. Twelve hundred feet down, the falling man had struck glancingly upon the smooth side of an out-jutting rock and his crushed body had been flung far out and sideways. It plunged into the rapids below the barrier and was borne away down the cañon. But this the girl could not have seen even in midday.

  She looked for the red star of the distant fire where she knew her brother was lying. She could not see it. The point upon which the falling man had struck shut off her view. The other side of the split rock was where she and Genevieve had looked down through the glasses and seen Blake. She failed to realize the difference in the change of position. Her horror deepened. She thought that Gowan had hurled straight down to the bottom with all the terrific velocity of that sheer drop, and that he had plunged upon the fire and upon the dear form outstretched beside it, to crush and mangle and be crushed and mangled. The thought was too frightful for human endurance.

  A long time she lay in a swoon, her head on the very edge of the brink. It was the wailing of the hungry, frightened baby that at last called her back to life and action. She dragged herself up around to the hiding place. The neglected baby was not easy to quiet. The cream had soured. There was nothing that she could give him except water. All the eggs that were left she had put in the knapsack that Ashton was carrying down to her brother. The baby now showed the full reflex of his mother’s long hours of anxiety and fear. He fretted and cried and would not be comforted.

  The chill of approaching dawn forced her to rebuild the outburnt fire. The warm glow and the play of the flames diverted the child and hushed his outcry. Holding him so that he might continue to watch the dancing tongues of fire, the girl sat motionless, going over and over again in her mind all that had occurred since the tattered, bleeding, purple-faced climber had come straining up out of the depths.... It could not have happened––it was all a hideous dream.... Would they never come? Must she sit here forever––alone!

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  FRIENDS IN NEED

  Because of the moonlight she did not heed the graying of the east. But the whinnying of the picketed horses roused her from the apathy of misery into which she had sunk. She stood up and looked along the ridge. A small roundish object appeared above the crest––then others. They rose quickly––the heads of riders spurring their horses up the far side of the ridge.

  Singly, in pairs, in groups, the rescuers burst up into view and came loping down to her, shouting and waving. In the lead rode her father and the sheriff; in the midst Genevieve, between two attendant young punchers. In all, there were nearly two dozen eager, resolute men, everyone an admiring friend of Miss Chuckie, everyone zealous to serve her and hers.

  The girl stood waiting beside the fire. She had tried to run to meet them and found that she could not move. The suddenness of their coming after all that fearful night of waiting seemed to numb her limbs.

  They rushed down upon her, waving, shouting questions. Her father, on Rocket, was the first to reach her. He sprang off and ran to put his arm about her quivering shoulders.

  “Honey! it’s all right now!” he assured her. “We’re here with everything that’s needed. We’ll soon yank him up out of that hole!”

  The baby, frightened by the rush and tumult of the off-leaping riders, began to scream. Someone took him from the girl’s arms and handed him to his mother as she was lifted down out of her saddle. Isobel pressed her face against her father’s sweaty breast.

  “Hold on, Miss Chuckie!” sang out one of the men. “Don’t let go yet. Where’s Gowan––Kid Gowan?”

  She shuddered convulsively, yet managed to reply: “He––was trying to––to roll the rock down. Tom, my brother, is right below it. I heard and came to see. His back was to me. I could not shoot––I could not raise my pistol. When I spoke, he whirled and shot at me. He––”

  “Kid––shot at you?” cried Knowles. “At you? ’Tain’t possible!”

  “He didn’t mean to. He fired before he saw who I was. Then he saw. He forgot everything––everything except that he had shot at me. He backed off––there––over the edge!”

  A sudden hush fell on the excited crowd. One man went to peer down from the place to which the girl had pointed. He came back softly. “Same place where the last bunch of sheep went over,” he said. “Rest of us were pretty sick––ready to quit. He kept after them until the last ewe jumped. Said they’d gone to hell, where they belonged.”

  “He’s the one that’s gone there!” said the sheriff. “Look at the way this bowlder is pried loose, ready to roll over! Once heard tell that his real dad was Billie the Kid. Some of you mayn’t have heard tell of Billie. He was the coldest blooded, promiscuous murderer of them days when we used to drive from Texas to Montana and the boys used to shoot-up towns and each other just for fun. Well, this Kid Gowan has got Billie’s eyes and slit mouth. Can’t say I ever took to him, but seeing as how he was a crack-up puncher and Wes Knowles’ foreman––”

  “That’s it! I can’t understand it––Kid has been almost like a son to me all these years!” complained Knowles perplexedly. He explained to his daughter. “You’re wondering why I didn’t come sooner, honey. Those Utes had been let go. We had to follow them up a long ways. When we got them back and put them on that trail from the waterhole, they found it led straight across the flats to where the horses and wagon had stood. There the tracks of the Indian shoes ended, and the tracks of shod hoofs led off into the brush. We followed them all the way ’round to the lower waterhole and up the lower creek to the ranch, and there they took us right to Rocket’s heels. The Jap said Kid had his saddle in the wagon when he came back from town, and he had a new hat. Mr. Blake did some hot shooting at that assassin on the hill. So, putting two and two together––”


  “Oh, Daddy, I know––I knew when I saw him look at Lafe!”

  “The––” Knowles choked back the epithet. “Yes, Mrs. Blake told us about that––and about her husband! Jumping Jehosaphat! Think of his being your brother! You must have been plumb locoed, to keep still about that! Why didn’t you tell us, honey?––leastways me, your Daddy!”

  “I––I––But about Genevieve? Tell me. You could have come sooner if she––Was she lost? I was sure that pony––”

  “Better have given her a fast one. It came on so dark before he was half down the mountain that she was knocked out of the saddle by a branch. He went on down to the waterhole. She tried to catch him––couldn’t. Got lost and wandered all around before she got down to the waterhole and caught him. We had got to the ranch at dusk, and all the posse had turned in for the night. She came loping down the divide just after moonrise. We started as soon as we could rake up all the picket-pins and rope. Wanted Mrs. Blake to wait and come on later; but talk about grit! We simply couldn’t make her stay behind.”

  Isobel thrust herself free from her father’s arms and darted out through the circle of rugged, earnest-faced punchers and cowmen to where Genevieve lay resting with the baby clasped to her bosom.

  “Dear! you poor dear!” she murmured, kneeling to stroke the head of the weary young mother.

  “I shall soon be rested,” replied Genevieve. “How about Tom? Have you kept watch of him? Has he moved?”

  The girl shrank back, unable to face her sister-in-law’s eager look.

  “No––I––The fire––it––it disappeared, and I could not see.”

  Genevieve smiled, and the reddening dawn lent a trace of color to her pale face. “It was a good sign. He could not have been suffering so much. He must have slept, and the fire died down.”

  “Oh! you think that was it?” sighed Isobel. “I feared––”

  She did not say what it was she had feared. As she paused Genevieve looked up into her agitated face and asked quickly: “But Lafayette? Is he still sleeping?”

  “Yes, where’s Lafe, honey?” inquired Knowles. “We’ll have to roust him out to tell us just what way he came up.”

  “Haven’t I told you?” cried Isobel, her head still in a whirl of conflicting emotions. Then, as tersely and quietly as her father would have related it, she told the bald facts of how Ashton had been wakened by the snarl of the wolf, how he had insisted upon going back to help her brother, and how he had gone down into the darkness, the pack and lantern slung over his shoulder.

  “By––James!” vowed Knowles, when she had finished. “Any man on the Western Slope say that boy’s not acclimated, he’d better look for another climate himself.”

  “Gentleman,” the sheriff addressed the exclaiming crowd, “you heard tell what the little lady had to say about her husband and this Lafe Ashton going down into Deep Cañon, where no man ever went before. Now Miss Chuckie has told us again how Ashton climbed up here, where no man in this section had a notion anything short of a mountain sheep could climb. Well, what does the gritty kid do but turn round and climb down again––in the dark, mind you! They’re down there now, both of them––down in the bottom of Deep Cañon. We called them tenderfeet, that day when Mr. Blake honored our county seat by sidetracking his palatial car. Boys, down there in that hole are the two nerviest men I ever heard tell about. One of ’em has a broken leg. The other has broke the trail for us. I ask for volunteers to go down with me and yank ’em up out of there. Gentlemen, who offers?”

  Instantly the crowd surged forward. Every man shouted, whooped, struggled to thrust himself ahead of the others and force the acceptance of his services on the sheriff.

  “Hold on, boys!” he remonstrated. “Just hold your hawsses. I didn’t ask for a stampede. You can’t all go down. Last man over might get in a hurry to catch the first, and start a manslide.”

  “I vote we set a thirty-year limit,” put in one of the younger punchers.

  This raised a clamor of dissent from the older men.

  “Tell you what,” shouted another. “Let Miss Chuckie cut out the lucky ones.”

  “That’s the ticket––Now you’re talking!” Every man shouted approval, and fell silent as Isobel sprang up from beside Genevieve.

  “Friends!” she exclaimed, her eyes radiant, “it’s such times as these that makes life grand! I believe six of you would be enough, but I’ll make it ten. First, I’m going to bar everyone who has a wife or children.”

  “That doesn’t include me, honey,” hastily protested her father.

  “Then you come in the next––none over thirty-five nor under twenty.”

  A groan arose from some of the youngsters, but the older men took their disappointment in stolid silence. She went on with calm decisiveness: “Now those of you that have done any considerable mountain climbing afoot this summer, please step this way.”

  Two members of a recently disbanded surveying party, four punchers who had tried their luck at prospecting on the snowy range, and three wild horse hunters sprang forward in response to the request.

  “That’s enough,” said the sheriff. “I’ve got to own up to being forty. But I’m leading this here posse, and I’ll eat my hat if I can’t outclimb anything on two legs in this county. String out your ropes, boys, and pass over all them picket-pins. We’ll need a purchase now and again, I figure, hauling up Mr. Blake. Hustle! Here’s the sun clean up.”

  Under the brusquely jovial directions of their leader, the lucky nine divested themselves of spurs and cartridge belts, tied themselves to the line at intervals of several feet, and promptly started down the dizzy ledges. The others helped them during the first fifty yards of descent with the line that Isobel had drawn up after it had been cast loose by Ashton. They then gathered along the brink, enviously watching the descent of their companions into the shadowy abyss.

  Genevieve came to where Isobel and her father crouched beside the others. “Thomas will not let me put him down, Belle,” she said. “I see you left the glasses beside the rock. If Lafayette has reached the bottom safely––”

  “If––safely!” echoed Isobel. “Daddy, you look––quick, please!”

  Knowles hastened to skirt along the brink to where the little field glasses lay at the near side of the split rock. The two followed him, Genevieve smiling with pleasant anticipation, Isobel trembling with doubt and dread. The cowman stretched out on the rim shelf and peered over.

  “Um-m-m,” he muttered. “Can’t see anything down there. Too dark yet.”

  “Look straight below you,” said Genevieve.

  “Hey?––Uh! By––James! Well, if that ain’t a picture now! These sure are mighty fine little glasses, ma’am. I can see ’em plain as day.”

  “Them?––you say ‘them,’ Daddy?” cried Isobel.

  “Sure. Come and look for yourself. Guess Lafe is fixing Mr. Blake’s leg.––Which reminds me, honey, that before we left the ranch, Mrs. Blake had me send for that lunger sawbones that’s come to live at Stockchute. He’ll be here, I figure, before or soon after the boys get Mr. Blake up into God’s sunshine.”

  “Brother Tom, Daddy––you mean my Brother Tom!” joyfully corrected the girl as she took the glasses.

  “Well, you’ve got to give me time to chew on it, honey. It’s come too sudden for me to take it all in.” He stood up and gazed gravely at the smiling mother and her comforted baby. “Hum-m-m. Then that yearling is my Chuckie’s own blood nephew. Well, ma’am, what do you think of it, if I may ask?”

  “Can’t you make it ‘Jenny,’ Uncle Wes?” asked Genevieve.

  He stared at her blankly. “But I didn’t adopt him, ma’am––only her.”

  “He is the brother of your dear daughter, and I am his wife. Come now,” she coaxed, “you must admit that brings me near enough to call you ‘Uncle Wes.’”

  “You’ve got me, ma’am––Jenny. I give in, I throw up the fight. That irrigation project now––Chuckie’s brother
can have anything of mine he asks for. Only there’s one thing––you’ve got to make that yearling say ‘Granddad’ when he talks to me.”

  “O-oh!” cooed Genevieve. “To think you feel that way towards him! Of course he shall say it. And I––Will you not allow me to make it ‘Daddy’?”

  He could not resist her enticingly upturned lips. He brushed down his bristly mustache, and bent over awkwardly, to kiss his new daughter.

  “Thought you were one of those super-high-toned ladies, m’m––Jenny,” he remarked.

  The cultured child of millions smiled up at him reproachfully. “What! after I have been with you so long, Daddy? But it’s true there was a time––before Tom taught me that men cannot be judged by mere polish and veneer, or the lack of polish and veneer.”

  Isobel, all her doubts and fears allayed, had risen from the precipice’s edge in time to hear Genevieve’s reply. She added eagerly: “Nor should men be judged by what they have been if they have become something else––if they have climbed up––up out of the depths!”

  “Belle! dear Sister Belle! Then he has proved it to you? Oh, I am so glad for you! He has proved to you that he has climbed––to the heights.”

  “To the very heights! I must tell Daddy. Give me Thomas. See, he is fast asleep, the poor abused little darling! Go and watch them, and our climbers. They are going down like a string of mountain sheep.”

  Genevieve placed the baby in his aunt’s outstretched arms and went to look into the abyss through the field glasses. Isobel drew her father away, out of earshot of the down-peering group of men. She stopped behind the tent, which Gowan had pitched part way up the slope of the ridge.

  “You want to talk with me about Lafe, honey?” surmised Knowles, as the girl started to speak and hesitated.

  Her cheeks flamed scarlet, but she raised her shyly lowered eyes and looked up at him with a clear, direct gaze. “Yes, Daddy. He––he loves me, and I––love him.”

  “That so?” said Knowles. His eyes contracted. It was his only betrayal of the wrench she had given the tender heart within his tough exterior. “Well, I figured it was bound to come some day. I’ve been lucky not to lose you any time the last four years.”