"Are you stopped?" asked Sheba.
"Looks that way."
A small pine projected from the edge of the shelf out over the precipice. It might be strong enough to bear his weight. It might not. Gordon unbuckled his belt and threw one end over the trunk of the dwarf tree. Gingerly he tested it with his weight, then went up hand over hand and worked himself over the edge of the little plateau.
"All right?" the girl called up.
"All right. But you can't make it. I'm coming down again."
"I'm going to try."
"I wouldn't, Miss O'Neill. It's really dangerous."
"I'd like to try it. I'll stop if it's too hard," she promised.
The strength of her slender wrists surprised him. She struggled up the vertical crevasse inch by inch. His heart was full of fear, for a misstep now would be fatal. He lay down with his face over the ledge and lowered to her the buckled loop of his belt. Twice she stopped exhausted, her back and her hands pressed against the walls of the trough angle for support.
"Better give it up," he advised.
"I'll not then." She smiled stubbornly as she shook her head.
Presently her fingers touched the belt.
"SO YOU THINK I'M A 'FRAID-CAT, MR. ELLIOT?"
Gordon edged forward an inch or two farther. "Put your hand through the loop and catch hold of the leather above," he told her.
She did so, and at the same instant her foot slipped. The girl swung out into space suspended by one wrist. The muscles of Elliot hardened into steel as they responded to the strain. His body began to slide very slowly down the incline.
In a moment the acute danger was past. Sheba had found a hold with her feet and relieved somewhat the dead pull upon Elliot.
She had not voiced a cry, but the face that looked up into his was very white.
"Take your time," he said in a quiet, matter-of-fact way.
With his help she came close enough for him to reach her hand. After that it was only a moment before she knelt on the plateau beside him.
"Touch and go, wasn't it?" Sheba tried to smile, but the colorless lips told the young man she was still faint from the shock.
He knew he was going to reproach himself bitterly for having led her into such a risk, but he could not just now afford to waste his energies on regrets. Nor could he let her mind dwell on past dangers so long as there were future ones to be faced.
"You might have sprained your wrist," he said lightly as he rose to examine the cliff still to be negotiated.
Her dark eyes looked at him with quick surprise. "So I might," she answered dryly.
But his indifferent tone had the effect upon her of a plunge into cold water. It braced and stiffened her will. If he wanted to ignore the terrible danger through which she had passed, certainly she was not going to remind him of it.
Between where they stood and the summit of the cliff was another rock traverse. A kind of rough, natural stairway led down to a point opposite them. But before this could be reached thirty feet of granite must be crossed. The wall looked hazardous enough in all faith. It lay in the shade, and there were spots where a thin coating of ice covered the smooth slabs. But there was no other way up, and if the traverse could be made the rest was easy.
Gordon was mountaineer enough to know that the climb up is safer than the one back. The only possible way for them to go down the trough was for him to lower her by the belt until she found footing enough to go alone. He did not quite admit it to himself, but in his heart he doubted whether she could make it safely.
The alternative was the cliff face.
CHAPTER V
ACROSS THE TRAVERSE
Elliot took off his shoes and turned toward the traverse.
"Think I'll see if I can cross to that stairway. You had better wait here, Miss O'Neill, until we find out if it can be done."
His manner was casual, his voice studiously light.
Sheba looked across the cliff and down to the boulder bed two hundred feet below. "You can never do it in the world. Isn't there another way up?"
"No. The wall above us slopes out. I've got to cross to the stairway. If I make it I'm going to get a rope."
"Do you mean you're going back to town for one?"
"Yes."
Her eyes fastened to his in a long, unspoken question. She read the answer. He was afraid to have her try the trough again. To get back to town by way of their roundabout ascent would waste time. If he was going to rescue her before night, he must take the shortest cut, and that was across the face of the sheer cliff. For the first time she understood how serious was their plight.
"We can go back together by the trough, can't we?" But even as she asked, her heart sank at the thought of facing again that dizzy height. The moment of horror when she had thought herself lost had shaken her nerve.
"It would be difficult."
The glance of the girl swept again the face of the wall he must cross. It could not be done without a rope. Her fear-filled eyes came back to his.
"It's my fault. I made you come," she said in a low voice.
"Nonsense," he answered cheerfully. "There's no harm done. If I can't reach the stairway I can come back and go down by the trough."
Sheba assented doubtfully.
It had come on to drizzle again. The rain was fine and cold, almost a mist, and already it was forming a film of ice on the rocks.
"I can't take time to go back by the trough. The point is that I don't want you camped up here after night. There has been no sun on this side of the spur and in the chill of the evening it must get cold even in summer."
He was making his preparations as he talked. His coat he took off and threw down. His shoes he tied by the laces to his belt.
"I'll try not to be very long," he promised.
"It's God's will then, so it is," she sighed, relapsing into the vernacular.
Her voice was low and not very steady, for the heart of the girl was heavy. She knew she must not protest his decision. That was not the way to play the game. But somehow the salt had gone from their light-hearted adventure. She had become panicky from the moment when her feet had started the rubble in the trough and gone flying into the air. The gayety that had been the note of their tramp had given place to fears.
Elliot took her little hand in a warm, strong grip. "You're not going to be afraid. We'll work out all right, you know."
"Yes."
"It's not just the thing to leave a lady in the rain when you take her for a walk, but it can't be helped. We'll laugh about it to-morrow."
Would they? she wondered, answering his smile faintly. Her courage was sapped. She wanted to cry out that he must not try the traverse, but she set her will not to make it harder for him.
He turned to the climb.
"You've forgotten your coat," she reminded.
"I'm traveling light this trip. You'd better slip it on before you get chilled."
Sheba knew he had left it on purpose for her.
Her fascinated eyes followed him while he moved out from the plateau across the face of the precipice. His hand had found a knob of projecting feldspar and he was feeling with his right foot for a hold in some moss that grew in a crevice. He had none of the tools for climbing—no rope, no hatchet, none of the support of numbers. All the allies he could summon were his bare hands and feet, his resilient muscles, and his stout heart. To make it worse, the ice film from the rain coated every jutting inch of quartz with danger.
But he worked steadily forward, moving with the infinite caution of one who knows that there will be no chance to remedy later any mistake. A slight error in judgment, the failure in response of any one of fifty muscles, would send him plunging down.
Occasionally he spoke to Sheba, but she volunteered no remarks. It was her part to wait and watch while he concentrated every faculty upon his task. He had come to an impasse after crossing a dozen feet of the wall and was working up to get around a slab of granite which protruded, a convex barrier, from th
e surface of the cliff. It struck the girl that from a distance he must look like a fly on a pane of glass. Even to her, close as she was, that smooth rock surface looked impossible.
Her eye left him for an instant to sweep the gulf below. She gave a little cry, ran to his coat, and began to wave it. For the first time since Elliot had begun the traverse she took the initiative in speech.
"I see some people away over to the left, Mr. Elliot. I'm going to call to them." Her voice throbbed with hope.
But it was not her shouts or his, which would not have carried one tenth the distance, that reached the group in the valley. One of them caught a glimpse of the wildly waving coat. There was a consultation and two or three fluttered handkerchiefs in response. Presently they moved on.
Sheba could not believe her eyes. "They're not leaving us surely?" she gasped.
"That's what they're doing," answered Gordon grimly. "They think we're calling to them out of vanity to show them where we climbed."
"Oh!" She strangled a sob in her throat. Her heart was weighted as with lead.
"I'm going to make it. I think I see my way from here," her companion called across to her. "A fault runs to the foot of the stairway, if I can only do the next yard or two."
He did them, by throwing caution to the winds. An icy, rounded boulder projected above him out of reach. He unfastened his belt again and put the shoes, tied by the laces, around his neck. There was one way to get across to the ledge of the fault. He took hold of the two ends of the belt, crouched, and leaned forward on tiptoes toward the knob. The loop of the belt slid over the ice-coated boss. There was no chance to draw back now, to test the hold he had gained. If the leather slipped he was lost. His body swung across the abyss and his feet landed on the little ledge beyond.
His shout of success came perhaps ten minutes later. "I've reached the stairway, Miss O'Neill. I'll try not to be long, but you'd better exercise to keep up the circulation. Don't worry, please. I'll be back before night."
"I'm so glad," she cried joyfully. "I was afraid for you. And I'll not worry a bit. Good-bye."
Elliot made his way up to the summit and ran along a footpath which brought him to a bridge across the mountain stream just above the falls. The trail zigzagged down the turbulent little river close to the bank. Before he had specialized on the short distances Gordon had been a cross-country runner. He was in fair condition and he covered the ground fast.
About a mile below the falls he met two men. One of them was Colby Macdonald. He carried a coil of rope over one shoulder. The big Alaskan explained that he had not been able to get it out of his head that perhaps the climbers who had waved at his party had been in difficulties. So he had got a rope from the cabin of an old miner and was on his way back to the falls.
The three climbed to the falls, crossed the bridge, and reached the top of the cliff.
"You know the lay of the land down there, Mr. Elliot. We'll lower you," decided Macdonald, who took command as a matter of course.
Gordon presently stood beside Sheba on the little plateau. She had quite recovered from the touch of hysteria that had attacked her courage. The wind and the rain had whipped the color into her soft cheeks, had disarranged a little the crinkly, blue-black hair, wet tendrils of which nestled against her temples. The health and buoyancy of the girl were in the live eyes that met his eagerly.
"You weren't long," was all she said.
"I met them coming," he answered as he dropped the loop of the rope over her head and arranged it under her shoulders.
He showed her how to relieve part of the strain of the rope on her flesh by using her hands to lift.
"All ready?" Macdonald called from above.
"All ready," Elliot answered. To Sheba he said, "Hold tight."
The girl was swung from the ledge and rose jerkily in the air. She laughed gayly down at her friend below.
"It's fun."
Gordon followed her a couple of minutes later. She was waiting to give him a hand over the edge of the cliff.
"Miss O'Neill, this is Mr. Macdonald," he said, as soon as he had freed himself from the rope. "You are fellow passengers on the Hannah."
Macdonald was looking at her straight and hard. "Your father's name—was it Farrell O'Neill?" he asked bluntly.
"Yes."
"I knew him."
The girl's eyes lit. "I'm glad, Mr. Macdonald. That's one reason I wanted to come to Alaska—to hear about my father's life here. Will you tell me?"
"Sometime. We must be going now to catch the boat—after I've had a look at the cliff this young man crawled across."
He turned away, abruptly it struck Elliot, and climbed down the natural stairway up which the young man had come. Presently he rejoined those above. Macdonald looked at Elliot with a new respect.
"You're in luck, my friend, that we're not carrying you from the foot of the cliff," he said dryly. "I wouldn't cross that rock wall for a hundred thousand dollars in cold cash."
"Nor I again," admitted Gordon with a laugh. "But we had either to homestead that plateau or vacate it. I preferred the latter."
Miss O'Neill's deep eyes looked at him. She was about to speak, then changed her mind.
CHAPTER VI
SHEBA SINGS—AND TWO MEN LISTEN
Elliot did not see Miss O'Neill next morning until she appeared in the dining-room for breakfast. He timed himself to get through so as to join her when she left. They strolled out to the deck together.
"Did you sleep well?" he asked.
"After I fell asleep. It took me a long time. I kept seeing you on the traverse."
He came abruptly to what was on his mind. "I have an apology to make, Miss O'Neill. If I made light of your danger yesterday, it was because I was afraid you might break down. I had to seem unsympathetic rather than risk that."
She smiled forgiveness. "All you said was that I might have sprained my wrist. It was true too. I might have—and I did." Sheba showed a white linen bandage tied tightly around her wrist.
"Does it pain much?"
"Not so much now. It throbbed a good deal last night."
"Your whole weight came on it with a wrench. No wonder it hurt."
Sheba noticed that the Hannah was drawing up to a wharf and the passengers were lining up with their belongings. "Is this where we change?"
"Those of us going to Kusiak transfer here. But there's no hurry. We wait at this landing two hours."
Gordon helped Sheba move her baggage to the other boat and joined her on deck. They were both strangers in the land. Their only common acquaintance was Macdonald and he was letting Mrs. Mallory absorb his attention just now. Left to their own resources the two young people naturally drifted together a good deal.
This suited Elliot. He found his companion wholly delightful, not the less because she was so different from the girls he knew at home. She could be frank, and even shyly audacious on occasion, but she held a little note of reserve he felt bound to respect. Her experience of the world had clearly been limited. She was not at all sure of herself, of the proper degree of intimacy to permit herself with a strange and likable young man who had done her so signal a service.
Macdonald left the boat twenty miles below Kusiak with Mrs. Mallory and the Selfridges. A chauffeur with a motor-car was waiting on the wharf to run them to town, but he gave the wheel to Macdonald and took the seat beside the driver.
The little miner Strong grinned across to Elliot, who was standing beside Miss O'Neill at the boat rail.
"That's Mac all over. He hires a fellow to run his car—brings him up here from Seattle—and then takes the wheel himself every time he rides. I don't somehow see Mac sitting back and letting another man run the machine."
It was close to noon before the river boat turned a bend and steamed up to the wharf at Kusiak. The place was an undistinguished little log town that rambled back from the river up the hill in a hit-or-miss fashion. Its main street ran a tortuous course parallel to the stream.
Hal
f of the town, it seemed, was down to meet the boat.
"Are you going to the hotel or direct to your cousin's?" Gordon asked Miss O'Neill.
"To my cousin's. I fancy she's down here to meet me. It was arranged that I come on this boat."
There was much waving of handkerchiefs and shouting back and forth as the steamer slowly drew close to the landing.
Elliot caught a glimpse of the only people in Kusiak he had known before coming in, but though he waved to them he saw they did not recognize him. After the usual delay about getting ashore he walked down the gangway carrying the suitcases of the Irish girl. Sheba followed at his heels. On the wharf he came face to face with a slender, well-dressed young woman.
"Diane!" he cried.
She stared at him. "You! What in Heaven's name are you doing here, Gordon Elliot?" she demanded, and before he could answer had seized both hands and turned excitedly to call a stocky man near. "Peter—Peter! Guess who's here?"
"Hello, Paget!" grinned Gordon, and he shook hands with the husband of Diane.
Elliot turned to introduce his friend, but she anticipated him.
"Cousin Diane," she said shyly. "Don't you know me?"
Mrs. Paget swooped down upon the girl and smothered her in her embrace.
"This is Sheba—little Sheba that I have told you so often about, Peter," she cried. "Glory be, I'm glad to see you, child." And Diane kissed her again warmly. "You two met on the boat, of course, coming in, I hope you didn't let her get lonesome, Gordon. Look after Sheba's suitcases, Peter. You'll come to dinner to-night, Gordon—at seven."
"I'm in the kind hands of my countrywoman," laughed Gordon. "I'll certainly be on hand."
"But what in the world are you doing here? You're the last man I'd have expected to see."
"I'm in the service of the Government, and I've been sent in on business."
The Yukon Trail Page 4
