“You have something to tell me––your voice––your eyes––”
“You have something to tell me––your voice––your eyes––”
287
“Why, Miss Chuckie!” he remonstrated, “you’re not going to break down now. You see how Jenny takes it. There’s nothing to fear.”
“Oh, but, Tom!” she panted, “you––you don’t understand! you don’t know! It’s not merely the danger! It’s the dreadful thought that if you––if you should not––come back––and I hadn’t told you!”
“Told me?” he echoed in hushed wonderment as her anguished soul looked out at him through her wide eyes and he sensed the first vague foreshadowing of the truth. “You have something to tell me––your voice!––your eyes!––”
“You see it! You know me!” she gasped, and she flung herself into his arms. Straining herself to him in half frantic ecstasy, she murmured in a broken whisper: “Yes! I am––am Belle! It is wicked and selfish to tell you; but to have you go down there without first––I could not bear it! Yet I––I shall not drag you down––disgrace you. Never that! I’ll go away!... Oh, Tom! dear Tom!”
He had stood dumfounded by the revelation of her identity. At first he could not speak; hardly could he think. His eyes stared into hers with a dazed look. But before she could finish her impassioned declaration of self-abnegation he roused from his bewilderment,288and his great arms closed about her quivering body. He crushed her to him and pressed his lips upon her white forehead.
“Belle!––poor little Belle!... But why? Tell me why? All this time, and you never showed by a single word or look!”
“I did!” she sought to defend herself from the tender reproach. “I did, but I––I was afraid to tell.”
“Afraid?”
The girl’s face flamed scarlet with shame. She sought to draw away from him. “Let me go, Tom! oh, please, let me go! I am a selfish, wicked girl! I have done it! I have done it! Now there is no help for it! She must be told––all!”
“All?” he questioned.
“Yes, all, Tom! I cannot deny Mary! She saved me! I believe she is in Heaven. She could not help doing what she did. She could not help it, Tom––and she saved me! I must give you up––go away; but I can never, never deny my sister!”
Blake swung half around with the quivering girl, and looked over her downbent head at his wife. Genevieve stood almost within arm’s-length of them. He met her gaze, and immediately pushed the girl out towards her.
“Listen, Belle,” he said. “It is all right. Here is Jenny waiting for you. She understands.”289
Gowan, watching rigid and tense-lipped, with his hand clenched on the hilt of his half-drawn Colt’s, was astonished to see Mrs. Blake step forward and clasp Isobel in her arms. But Ashton did not see the strange act that checked the puncher’s vengeful shot. While the girl was yet clinging to Blake, he had turned and fled along the edge of the ravine, for the moment stark mad with rage and despair.
He rushed off without a cry, and the others were themselves far too surcharged with emotion to heed his going until he had disappeared around a turn in the ravine. When at last, almost spent with exertion, he staggered up a ridge to glare back at those from whom he had fled, his bloodshot eyes could perceive only three figures on the brink of the gorge. They were kneeling to look over into the ravine.
His thoughts were still in a wild whirl, but the heat of his mad rage had passed and left him in a cold fury. He instantly comprehended that Blake had swung over the edge and was descending the rope down the almost sheer face of the ravine wall.
Now was the time! A touch of a knife-edge to the rope, and the girl would be saved. Would Gowan think of it?... Of course he would think of it. But he would not do it. He would leave the deed to be done by the man to whom he had relinquished Miss Chuckie. It was for that man to save her––to destroy the tempter and break the spell of fascination290that was drawing her over the brink of a pit far deeper than any earthly cañon. He, Lafayette Ashton––not Gowan––was the man. He must save her––down there in the depths, where no eye could see.
291CHAPTER XXVTHE DESCENT INTO HELL
Dangling like a spider on its thread, with a twist of the rope around one of his legs, Blake had gone down into the ravine, hand under hand, with the agility of a sailor. The tough leather of his chapareras prevented the rope from chafing the leg around which it slipped, and he managed with his free foot to fend himself off from the sharp-cornered ledges of the cliff side. In this he was less concerned for himself than for his level, which he carried in a sling, high up between his shoulders.
He was soon safe at the lower end of the rope, on the shelf beside the bundled outfit. He waved his hat to the down-peering watchers, and climbed a few yards up the ravine, to creep in under an overhanging rock. A few moments later the loosened rope came sliding down the steep descent, the last length whipping from ledge to ledge with a velocity that made it hiss through the air.
Blake was not disturbed by this proof of the cumulative speed of falling bodies. He came down and coolly set about his preparations for the descent of the292gorge bottom. He unlashed the bundle and divided its contents. This done, he took a vertical measurement by going out towards the cañon along a horizontal shelf on the side wall of the gorge, until he could drop his surveying chain down the sheer precipice to a shelf almost a hundred feet below him.
Unaware of Ashton’s mistake and furious flight, the engineer was proceeding with his work in the expectation that he would soon be joined by his assistant. He was not disappointed. As he returned along the shelf, after entering the measurement in his notebook, Ashton came bounding and scrambling down the ravine bottom at reckless speed. He fetched up on the verge of the break, purple-faced and panting. His mouth twitched nervously and there was a wild look in his dark eyes. But Blake attributed all to the excitement and exertion of the headlong rush down the ravine.
“No need for you to have hurried so, Lafe,” he said. “I suppose you had to go farther around than I thought would be necessary. But I’d rather you had kept me waiting an hour than for you to have chanced spraining an ankle.”
“Yes, you need me in your business!” scoffed Ashton.
“Your employer’s business,” rejoined the engineer. He straightened up from the packs that he was lashing together and gazed gravely at his scowling assistant. “See here, Mr. Ashton, this is no time for you to raise293a row. We shall have quite enough else to think about from now on, until we are up again out of the cañon.”
“I’ve enough to think about––and more!” muttered Ashton.
“Understand? I’m not asking anything of you for myself,” said Blake. “You are doing this survey for your employer.”
“I’m here because ofher!” retorted the younger man. “I’m here to make it certain that no harm is to come toher!”
Blake smiled. “Good for you! I hardly thought you were here for the fun of it. You are going to prove to us that you have the makings. We’re both working for her, Lafe. I don’t mind telling you now that I am planning to do something big for her.” He looked up the ravine wall, his eyes aglow with tenderness. “Belle! dear little Belle! To think that after all these years––”
“Shut up!” cried Ashton. “Stop that! stop it, and get to work! I know what you’re planning to do! Don’t talk to me!”
Blake stared in astonishment. “Didn’t think you were so sore over that old affair. I told you I had nothing to do about your father’s––”
“Don’t talk to me! don’t talk to me!” frantically cried Ashton. “You ruined me! Now her!”
“Lord! If you’re as sore as all that!” rejoined Blake, his eyes hardening. “Look here, Mr. Ashton,294we’ll settle this when we get up on top again. Meantime, I shall do my work, and I shall see to it that you do yours. Understand?”
“Get busy, then! I shall domywork!” snarled Ashton.
Blake pointed to one of the three bundles that he had tied together. “There’s half the grub, the tripod and the rod. I can manage the rest. I’ve dropped a measurement to the foot of the first incline.”
He swung one of the other bundles on his back, under the level. The third, which was made up of railroad spikes and picket-pins, he sent rolling down the steep slope, tied to one end of the rope. He had driven a spike into a crevice of the rock. Hooking the other end of the rope over its head with an open loop, he grasped the line and started to walk down the gorge bottom. As he descended he dragged the loose lengths of rope after him.
Ashton stood rigid, staring at the spike and loop. If the loop should slip or the spike pull out, he need only climb back out of the ravine––to her. But Blake’s work was not the kind to slip or pull out. The watcher looked at the powerful figure backing rapidly down that roof-like pitch. One of the toes of the level tripod under the taut loop would easily pry the rope off the spike-head. He turned his pack around to get at the tripod––and paused to look upwards at the295three tiny faces peering down over the brink of the cliff.
He slung the pack over his shoulder and grasped the rope to follow his leader, who had come to the narrow shelf from which another measurement must be taken. He made the descent no less rapidly and easily than had the engineer. He was naturally agile, and now he was too full of his purpose to have any thought of vertigo. Yet quickly as he followed, when he reached the shelf he found that Blake had already lowered the bundle of spikes over the cliff below and was reënforcing with a spike a picket-pin that he had driven deep into a crevice.
“Drop over the chain at that point,” curtly ordered the engineer. “Think you can climb back up this slope without the rope?”
“Yes,” answered Ashton, still more curtly.
Blake lifted the line and sent up it a wave that carried to the upper end and flipped the loop from the spike-head. He jerked the freed end down to him and knotted it securely to the picket-pin, while Ashton was making the third vertical measurement. He then lowered everything except the level in loops of the line, and wrapped a strip of canvas around the line where it bent over the sharp edge of the cliff.
Ashton laconically reported the measurement. Blake noted it in his book, and promptly swung himself296out over the edge of the cliff. Again his assistant looked at the fastening of the rope; again he looked upwards at the three tiny down-peering faces; and again he followed his leader. The sun was glaring directly down into the gorge. Later they would descend into the shadows where no eye could perceive from above the loosening of the rope.
Blake cut off the line at the foot of the cliff and left it dangling. They would require it for their ascent. Another Titan step took fifty feet more of the rope.
There followed a series of steep pitches, which they descended like the first, unlooping the rope from spike-head after spike-head. The only real difficulty of this part of the descent was the tedious task of carrying the vertical measurement down the slopes at places where even Blake could not find footing to climb out horizontally on either wall of the gorge to obtain a clear drop.
Always, as they descended, the engineer scanned the rocks both above and below, calculating where the gorge bottom could be reascended without a line. Whenever he considered the incline too smooth or too steep for safe footing, he drove in spikes near enough together to be successively lassoed from below with a length of line.
Had not the nature and condition of the rock provided frequent faults and crevices that permitted the driving of spikes, the descent must soon have become297impracticable. But the engineer invariably found some chink in which to hammer a spike with his powerful blows. As, time after time, he overcame difficulties so great that his companion could perceive no possible solution, Ashton began to feel himself struggling against a feeling of reluctant admiration.
All his hate could not blind him to the extraordinary mental and physical efficiency displayed by the engineer. Never once did the steely muscles permit a slip or false step, never once did the cool brain miscalculate the next most advantageous movement.
They were now so deep that Blake had to shout his infrequent directions, to be heard above the booming reverberations of the cañon. Half way down they came to a forty-foot cliff. Blake made his preparations, and swung over the edge. Here was an opportunity. Ashton instantly bent over the knot of the rope.
Close before his eyes he saw the clearly outlined shadow of his head. He hesitated and straightened on his knees to stare up at the top of the gorge. He could no longer discern the three down-peering faces, but he knew that they were still there. And the sunrays still pierced down to him between the walls of the gorge. The shadows were farther down, in the lower depths. He must follow and wait.
When he slid to the foot of the cliff, Blake silently cut off the rope. There was still nearly a hundred298and fifty feet left for them to use below. But they went down more than a thousand feet before they again had need of it. As Blake had foretold, the lower half of the descent was far less precipitous than the upper. In places the vertical measurements were carried down by rod readings, the level being set without its tripod on the points of rock where the previous readings had been taken. At other places Blake marked out horizontal points ahead on the gorge wall, and climbed to them with the chain.
All the time the reverberations of the cañon were becoming louder. Dark shadows began to gather along one wall of the gorge. The sun was no longer directly in line with the ravine, and they were now far down in the lower depths. Ashton’s knees were beginning to tremble with weakness. They had brought no water, for they were descending to the river. The torment of thirst was added to the torment of his hate. He began to look with fierce eagerness for the opportunity to do his work––to accomplish the deed for which he had descended into this inferno. Then he could go up again, out of the roaring, reverberating hell about him, away from the burning hell within him.
The shadows were creeping out at him from the side of the gorge. The sunshine was going––it was flickering away up the opposite precipices. Now it had gone. All the gorge was somber with shadows. And below were the blue-black depths of the cañon bottom.299Dread crept in upon his smoldering hate to sweep across its white-hot coals with chill gusts of fear.
But now they were come to another sheer cliff––the last in the descent. From its foot the gorge bottom inclined easily down the final three hundred feet to its mouth, where the river of the deep roared past along the cañon bed, its foam flashing silvery white through the gloom.
Here at last was the opportunity for which he had waited––here down in these dark shadows where no eye could see––here where no shriek or cry could pierce up to the outer world of light and sunshine through the wild uproar of the angry waters. He awaited the moment, aflame with pent-up fury, shivering with cold dread.
Blake dropped his chain from the cliff-edge and took the last vertical measurement––fifty-three feet. He smiled. The hardest part of the work was almost accomplished. He swung over the edge.
Ashton flung himself on his knees beside the triple knot that held the line fast to its spike. This time he did not hesitate, but began to tug at the rope end with fierce eagerness. He loosened one knot. The next was harder to unfasten. Blake had tied it with utmost secureness. At last it yielded to the tugging of his gloved fingers. He started to loosen the third knot. Suddenly the taut line slackened. With a stifled cry of rage, he paused to peer over the edge.300Blake had slipped down the line so rapidly that he was already at the foot of the cliff.
Reaching back, Ashton jerked the rope from the spike-head, to cast it down on the engineer. A glimpse of the flashing water in the cañon bottom gave momentary check to his vengeful impulse. If only he had a drink of that cool water! He was parched; his lips were cracking; in his mouth was the taste of dust. Must he stay up here on the dry rock while Blake went on down beside the foaming river to drink his fill?
As he paused, a doubt clutched his heart in an icy grip. All the way down that devil’s stairway he had been witness to Blake’s extraordinary resourcefulness and tremendous strength. What if he should find a way to clamber up the precipices? He had lowered everything before descending. There was nothing to fling down upon him––no loose rock or stone to topple over and crush him.
Chilled by that doubt, Ashton hesitated, his hands alternately tightening and relaxing their grip on the rope. What if the man should contrive to escape? There seemed no bounds to his ingenuity.... No, he must be followed on down into the cañon and destroyed, else he would escape––he would come up out of this inferno, like the demon he was, and destroyher. He must be followed!... And the water––the cool, refreshing water!
His thirst now seized upon Ashton with terrible intensity.301Rage, no less than the laborious exertion of the descent, had dried up his body with its feverish fire. Almost maddened with the torment of his craving, he looped the rope on the spike-head with reckless haste and slid down over the edge of the cliff.
As the line tautened with his weight it gave several inches, but he was too nearly frantic to heed. He slipped down it so swiftly that the strands burned his hands through the tough palms of his gloves. In a few moments his feet were on a level with Blake’s head. He clutched the rope tighter to check his fall. An instant later he dropped heavily on the rock shelf at the cliff foot, and the rope came swishing down after him.
“God!” shouted Blake. Involuntarily he flung back his head and stared up the great gorge to the faraway heights where were waiting his wife and child.
But Ashton neither paused nor looked upward. Rebounding from his fall, he rushed down the slope to the river, with a gasping cry––“Water! water!”
For a time the engineer stood as if stunned, his big fists clenched, his broad chest heaving laboriously. Yet he was far too well seasoned in desperate adventure to give way to despair. Soon he rallied. He lowered his gaze from the heights to examine the cliff and the adjoining walls of the gorge. All were alike sheer and unscalable. The lines about his big mouth hardened with grim determination. He picked up the302rope and began winding it about his mid-body above the low-buckled cartridge belt.
He arranged the coils with such care that he did not notice the condition of the end of the line until he had drawn in over eighty feet. Then at last he saw. Though he had not forgotten to wrap the line with canvas where it passed over the cliff edge, he had thought the strands must have been frayed through on a sharp corner of rock. Instead, he found himself staring at the clean-cut string-wrapped rope end that he had knotted to the spike.
For several moments he stood looking at it, his forehead creased in thought. What had become of the knot?... He could think of only one solution to the puzzle. He turned and gazed down through the gloom at the dim figure crouched beside the edge of the swirling water.
“Locoed,” he said pityingly––“Locoed.... Poor devil!”
303CHAPTER XXVIIN THE GLOOM
When the engineer came down to the river, Ashton still crouched low, his dripping head close over the water, as if he was afraid even to look away from it. Blake rinsed out his mouth and stood up to sip slowly from his hat, while looking about at the awesome spectacle of the cañon bottom.
His first glance was at the swift-flowing stream. His eyes brightened and the furrows in his forehead smoothed away. The river was not as formidable as its tumult and foam had threatened. It could be descended by wading at the places where ledges and bowlders along the base of the cañon walls failed to afford safe footing. He glanced up the stupendous precipices at the blue-black ribbon of sky, but only for a moment. His present thought was not of escape from the depths.
He bent over to grip the crouching man by the shoulder and lift him to his feet. Ashton writhed about and glared at him like a trapped wolf.
“Let go!” he snarled. “It was an accident! I didn’t mean to do it!”304
“Of course not,” replied Blake, releasing his grip but standing close that he might not have to shout. “It’s all right, old man––my fault. The knot slipped.”
“You own it! You own it’s your fault!” cried Ashton. “You’ve brought me down here into this hell-pit! We can’t get out! Lost! All your fault––yours!”
He made a frantic snatch and jerked the revolver from Blake’s holster. The engineer caught his wrist in an iron grasp and wrenched the weapon from him.
“None of that, old man,” he admonished with a cool sternness that chilled the frenzy of the other like a dash of ice water. “You’re here to do your work, and you’re going to do it. Understand?”
“My work!” repeated Ashton wildly.
“Yes, your work,” commanded Blake, his face as hard as iron. “We’re going to survey Deep Cañon down to the tunnel site. Your work is to carry rod. Do you get that?”
“Down the cañon?––deeper!”
“We can’t get back up here. There’s a place down there beyond the tunnel site where perhaps we can make it up the cañon wall.”
“A place where we––?” shrilled Ashton. “A place––Good God! and you stand here doing nothing!”
He whirled to spring out into the swirling water.305Blake was still swifter in his movements. He caught the fugitive by the arm and dragged him back.
“Wait!” he commanded. “We must first carry the levels down to the tunnel site. You hear that? Stick by me, and I’ll pull you through. Try to run, and, by God, I’ll shoot you like a dog!”
The captive glared into the steel-white eyes of the engineer, anger overcoming his panicky fear.
“Let go!” he panted. “Don’t worry! I’ll do my work––I’ll do my work!”
“If you don’t, you’ll never get out of this cañon,” grimly rejoined Blake. He released his hold, and started up the slope, with a curt order: “Come along. We can rod down the slope.”
Ashton followed him, silent and morose. The instrument was screwed to its tripod, and a line of levels from the foot of the last vertical measurement was carried down the slope to the cañon. The last rod reading was on a ledge, three feet above the water, at the corner of the gorge. Blake considered the reading worthy of permanent record. They had measured all the many hundreds of feet down from the top of High Mesa to these profound depths. With his two-pound hammer and one of the few remaining spikes, he chiseled a cross deep in the surface of the black rock.
That mark of the engineer-captain, scouting before the van of man’s Nature-conquering army, was the sign306of the first human beings that had ever descended alive to the bottom of Deep Cañon.
When he had cut the cross, Blake took out his Colt’s, and, gazing up the heights, began to fire at slow intervals. Confined between the walls of gorge and cañon, each report of the heavy revolver crashed out above the tumult of the river and ran echoing and reechoing up the stupendous precipices. Yet long before they reached the rim of those towering walls they blurred away and merged and were lost in the ceaseless reverberations of the waters.
Blake well knew that this would happen. But he also knew that the flash of the shot would be distinctly discernible in the gloom of the abyss. As he fired, he scanned the verge of the uppermost precipices. After the fourth shot he ceased firing and flung up his hand to point at the heights.
“Look!” he shouted. “They see! There is the flag!”
Ashton stared up with wide, feverish eyes. From an out-jutting point of rock on the lofty rim he saw a tiny white dot waving to and fro against the blue-black sky. The watchers above had seen the flash of the revolver shots and were fluttering the white flag in responsive signal. Though on the world above the sun beat down its full mid-afternoon flood of light, the two men in the abyss could see stars twinkling in the dark sky around the waving fleck of white.307
Blake fired two shots in quick succession, the agreed signal that told the flag was seen. He then calmly seated himself and began to add together the vertical measurements taken during the descent of the gorge. But Ashton groaned and flung himself face downward on the rough stone.
Blake soon finished his sum in addition, and the result brought a smile to his serious face. He checked the figures with painstaking carefulness, and nodded, fully satisfied. Replacing book and pencil in the deep pocket of his shirt, he opened one of the packages of food. When he had laid out enough for a hearty meal, he looked at Ashton. The prostrate man had not stirred.
“Come, Lafe,” he called encouragingly. “Time to eat.”
Ashton lay still and made no response.
Blake raised his voice––“Come! You’re not going to quit. You’re going to eat. You must keep your strength to fight your way through and up out of here––toher!”
Ashton sullenly rose and came to sit down on the rock beside the outspread food. He was silent, but he ate even more heartily than his companion. When they had finished, Blake swung his pack and level on his shoulder, fired one shot, and stepped out into the swift but shallow river. Wading as far downstream as he could see to read the rod in the twilight of the308depths, he set up the tripod of his instrument on a rock and took the reading given him by Ashton.
The survey of the cañon itself had begun. Unappalled by the awful height of the mighty precipices on either side, undaunted by the uncertainty of escape, heedless of the gloom of the deep, of the tumult and rush and chill of the icy waters, the engineer boldly advanced to the attack of this abysmal stronghold of Primeval Nature, his square jaw set in grim determination to wrest from these hitherto inviolate depths that which he sought to learn. Whatever might follow, he must and would unlock the secret of the hidden waters. Afterwards might come death by slow starvation or the quick dashing down from some half-scaled precipice. That mattered not now. First must the engineer perform his work,––first must he execute the task that he had set himself for the conquest of the chasm that was likely to prove his tomb.
Vastly different in purpose, yet no less resolute than the engineer, Ashton joined zealously in the grim battle with the abyss––for battle it soon proved to be. Only in places was the subterranean river shallow and easy to wade. More often it foamed in wild fury down steep rapids, to fling itself over ledges into black pools; or, worst of all, it swirled deep and arrowy-swift between fanged rocks where the channel narrowed.
Wading, swimming, leaping from rock to rock,309scrambling up and down the steep precipice foot, creeping along narrow shelves,––stubbornly the explorers fought their way deeper through that wild passage. Chilled by the icy waters and bruised by many a slip on loose stones and wet, water-polished rocks, ever they carried the line of levels down alongside the torrent, crossing over and back from side to side, twisting and turning with the twists and bends of the chasm. And at every stand Blake jotted down the rod readings in his half-soaked book with his pencil and figured the elevation of each turning point before “pulling up” his instrument to move on downstream to the next “set up.”
At the end of every half hour he fired a single shot to signal their progress in the depths to the watchers above. But never once did he stop to look up for the flag. Occasionally he was required to help Ashton through or over some unusually difficult passage. For the most part, however, each fought his own way. The odds were not altogether in favor of the older man. He was hampered by the care of the instrument, which must be shielded from all blows or falls. The rod, on the contrary, served as a staff and support to Ashton, alike in the water and on the rocks.
Some time before sunset the waning light in the cañon bottom became so dim that Blake was compelled to cease work. He took a last reading on a broad shelf of rock well above the surface of the water,310joined Ashton on the shelf, and began firing the revolver at five-minute intervals. After the fifth shot he at last perceived the white dot of the flag far above on the opposite brink of the chasm. He fired two shots in quick succession, and calmly sat down to open one of the soaked packages of food.
Ashton did not wait to be bidden to supper. He fell to on the food and ate ravenously. Blake did not check him, though he himself took little and carefully gathered up and returned to the package every scrap of food left at the end of the meal. As Ashton lay back on the rock he squirmed from side to side and groaned. His bruises were so numerous that he could not find a comfortable position.
“Cheer up!” grimly quoted Blake. “The worst is yet to come.”
He stretched himself out on the rock-shelf and, regardless of the sullen resistance of the younger man, drew him into his arms. Chilled to the marrow by his frequent icy drenchings, Ashton was shivering in the cold wind which came down the cañon with the approach of night. But Blake’s massive body and limbs were aglow with abundant vitality. Warmed and sheltered from the wind, the exhausted man relaxed like a child in the strong arms of his companion and quickly sank into the deep slumber of overtaxed nature.
Blake lay awake until the narrow strip of sky that showed between the vast walls of rock deepened to an311inky blackness thickly sprinkled with scintillating stars. The light of a watchfire flamed red far above on the opposite rim of the chasm wall. To the man below it was like the glow of human love in the chill darkness of the Unknown. With a gesture of reverent passion and adoration, he put his fingers to his lips and flung a kiss up out of the abyss. Then he, too, relaxed on the hard rock and sank into heavy sleep.
Ashton was the first to waken. The wind had changed, and he was roused by the different note in the ceaseless roar of the river. He stared up at the star-jeweled sky. It was still intensely black; yet the gloom of the depths was lessened by a vague pale illumination, a faint shadow of light that might have been the ghost of a dead day. He thought it was the gray dawn, and sought to roll over on his rock bed away from the sheltering embrace of Blake. The engineer was still deep in profound slumber. His big arm slipped laxly from across the moving man’s breast.
The change of position wrung a groan from Ashton. Every muscle in his body was cramped, every bruise stiff and sore. Not until he had turned and twisted for several moments was he able to rise to his feet. The vague ghost light about him brightened. He gazed upwards. He did not notice the tiny flame of the fire that told of the anxious watchers above. Out over the monstrous black wall of the abyss was drifting a burnished silver-white disk.312
“The moon!” he groaned. “Only the moon! To wait here––with him!––with him!”
He looked down at the big form of the sleeping man, and suddenly all his pent-up rage burst its bounds. It poured through his veins in streams of fire. He stared about in fierce eagerness in search of a weapon. Blake lay upon the hilt of the revolver; the level rod lacked weight and balance. But the heavy hammer––a blow on the upturned temple of the sleeper!––
With the cunning stealth of madness, Ashton took up the hammer and crept around back of Blake’s head. He straightened on his knees, and peered down at the calm, powerful face of the engineer.
What if he was a veritable Samson, this conqueror of cañons? Where now was his power? Sleep had bound fast his steel muscles, had numbed his indomitable will and locked his keen intellect in the black prison of unconsciousness.
The avenger hovered over him, gloating. Now at last was come the opportunity––the perfect opportunity, down in these uttermost depths, in the secret night time. The world above slept––and he slept. Never should he waken from that sleep; never should he rouse up in his evil strength to escape out of the abyss and bring ruin to her!
Lightly the hammer swung over and downward, measuring the curve of the stroke. It lifted and poised. Again it swung down; and again it lifted and313poised. The blow must be certain––there must not be the slightest chance of missing.
Each time the heavy steel head stopped a full two inches short of the upturned temple––but each time its shadow fell across the eyes of the sleeper. He stirred. The hammer whirled up, gripped in both hands of the kneeling man. The sleeper turned flat on his back, with his face full to the light. A quiver ran through the tense muscles of the avenger. Had the eyes of the sleeper opened, had their lids so much as fluttered, the hammer must have crashed down.
But it was the sleeper’s lips that moved. As it were by a miracle of acuteness, the tense nerves of the other’s ear caught the whispered words through the roaring of the river––“Jenny! Son!”
The hammer hurled away out into the swirl of the foam-flecked waters. The avenger flung himself about, face downward on the rock.
“God!” he sobbed, in an agony of remorse. “Forgive me, God! I cannot do it! I am weak––unfit!... Not even to save her!––not even to save her!”
He writhed in the anguish of his love and rage and self-abasement. He had failed; he was too weak to do the deed. But God––Would God permit that evil should befall her?
He struggled to his feet and flung up his quivering hands to moon and stars and black sky in passionate314invocation––“O God! You say that vengeance is Yours; that You will repay! Take me, if You will––I give myself! Only destroy him too! Save her! save her!”
Again Blake stirred, and this time he opened his eyes. Ashton had sunk down in a huddled silent heap. Blake gazed up at the watchfire on the heights, smiled, and turned over to again fall asleep.
315CHAPTER XXVIILOWER DEPTHS
Beetling precipices shut off the direct light of the moonbeams and left the abyss again in dense darkness long before the coming of the laggard dawn. Blake slept on, storing up strength for the renewal of the battle. Yet even he could not outsleep the reluctant lingering of night. He awoke while the tiny flame of the watchfire still flickered bright against the inky darkness of the sky.
Ashton had fallen into a fitful doze. The engineer stood up and silently groped his way to and fro on the shelf of rock, stretching and limbering his cramped muscles. He wasted no particle of energy; the moment he had relieved his stiffness he stretched out again. He lay contemplating that flame of love on the heights until it faded against the lessening blackness of the sky and the rays of the morning sun began to angle down the upper precipices.
He rose to take out two portions of food from the single pack in which he had bound up all the provisions. The portion for Ashton was small; his own was316smaller. He roused the dozing man and placed the larger share of food in his hand.
“Don’t drop it,” he cautioned. “That’s all I can let you have. We must go on rations until we can see a way out of this hole.”
Ashton ate his meager breakfast without replying. The fire within him had burned to ashes. He was cold and dull and dispirited. He had failed. He would have been willing to sit and brood, and wait for God to answer his prayer.––But his waiting was not to be an inert lingering in the place where he had failed.
The moment the down-creeping daylight so lessened the gloom of the depths that Blake could take rod readings, he plunged over into the stream, with a curtly cheerful command for Ashton to prepare to follow. Too dejected even to resist, the younger man silently obeyed. When Blake signaled to him through the dimness, he held the rod on the last turning-point of the previous day, and lowered himself from the shelf down into the stream.
The evening before, the water at this point had come up to his waist. It was now only knee-deep. His surprise was so great that in passing Blake he broke his sullen silence to remark the fact and ask what could have caused the change.
“Melting of the snow on the high range,” the engineer shouted in explanation. “Takes time for it to run down the cañon all these miles. River probably317still falling. Will begin to rise about noon. Faster we get along now, the easier it will be. Hustle!”
Ashton responded mechanically to the will of his commander. For the time being his own will was almost paralyzed. The reaction from his long-sustained rage had left him dazed and nerveless. He had sunk into a state of fatalistic indifference. He moved quickly downstream from turning-point to turning-point, driven by Blake’s will, but with a heedless recklessness that all Blake’s warnings could not check.
Within the first hour he twice stumbled and went under while wading deep reaches of the river, and once he fell from a ledge, bruising himself severely and knocking a splinter from the rod. Half an hour later he lost his footing in descending a swift and narrow place that would have been impassable at high water. Had not Blake been below him he would never have come out alive.
The engineer leaped in and dragged the drowning man to safety, after a desperate struggle with the torrent. But in the wild swirl, both the food-pack and the rod went adrift. The moment he had rescued his companion, Blake rushed away downstream, leaping like a goat from rock to rock. He at last overtook the rod, caught in the eddy of a pool. Of the pack he could find no trace. He returned to Ashton and silently handed him the rod.
There was no need for him to admonish. The loss318of all the food and the narrowness of his escape had sobered the younger man. He resumed his work with a cautious swiftness of movement that avoided all needless risks yet never hesitated to encounter and rush through the dangers that could not be avoided. In this he copied Blake.
All the time they were advancing down the angry torrent, deeper and deeper into its secret stronghold,––creeping, crawling, leaping, wading, swimming––step by step, turn after turn, wresting from the abyss that which the engineer was resolved to learn, even though he should learn, only to perish.
The day advanced. Steadfastly they struggled on down the bed of the river, twisting and crossing over with the winding course of the chasm; now between beetling precipices that shut out all sight of the blue-black sky; now in more open stretches where the Titanic walls swung apart and the glorious hot sun rays pierced down into the very depths to warm their drenched bodies and lighten their heavy spirits.
Ashton had long since lost all count of time. His watch had been smashed in his first fall of the day. But Blake seemed to have an intuitive sense of time. At fairly regular intervals he fired a shot to tell the watchers above the extent of their progress. Sometimes the answering flag-signal could be seen waving from the rim of the cañon. But in many places those above could not come near the brink to look over.319
The approach of midday found the bruised and weary fighters struggling through one of the narrowest reaches of the cañon. The precipices jutted out so far that the lower depths seemed more cavern than chasm, and the river swirled deep and swift between sheer, narrow walls. Twice Ashton was swept past what should have been the next turning-point, and Blake, unable to see the figures on the rod, had to guess at his readings.
At last the precipices swung apart and showed the sky at a twist in the cañon’s course that was the sharpest of all the turns the explorers had as yet encountered. As Blake came wading down past Ashton, along the inner curve of the bend, he stopped and pointed skywards. Ashton raised his drooping head and peered up at the rim of the opposite wall. From the brink a dense column of green-wood smoke was rising into the indigo sky.
“One more set-up,” shouted Blake.
Three minutes later he took a reading on the water and on a point of rock at the angle of the cañon-side around which the river swung in its sharp curve. Three more minutes, and the two battered fighters stood together on the last bench of that tremendous line of levels, with torn and rent clothing, sodden, gaping boots, bodies bruised from head to foot––bleeding, weary, but victorious! They had finished the work that Blake had set out to do.320
He held up the now-soaked notebook for Ashton to see the last penciled elevation on the wet paper.
“Two thousand, forty-five!” he shouted. “Over five hundred feet above that bench in Dry Greek Gulch! Water, electricity!––Dry Mesa shall be a garden!”
Ashton stared moodily into the exultant face of the engineer.
“Are you sure of that?” he asked. “How do you know that God will let you climb up out of this hell of stone and water?”
“There’s the saying, ‘God helps those who help themselves,’” replied Blake. “I’m going to put up the best fight I can. If that doesn’t win out, I shall at least have the satisfaction of not having quit. If you wish to pray, do so. The sooner we start the better. From now on, the water will be rising.”
“I prayed last night,” said Ashton. He added somberly, “And now we are both going to the devil.”
“No,” said Blake, with no less earnestness. “There is no devil––there is no room for a devil in all the universe. What man calls evil is ignorance,––his ignorance of those primeval forces of nature which he has yet to chain; his ignorance of those higher qualities in his own nature which, if known, would prevent him from wronging others and would enable him to bring happiness to himself and others.”321
“You say that!” cried Ashton. “You can mock! You do not believe in hell!”
Blake smiled grimly. “What do you call this?––But you mean a hell hereafter. I believe this: If, when we pass into the Unknown, we continue to exist as individual consciousnesses, then we carry with us the heaven and the hell that we have each upbuilt for ourselves.”
“God will not let you escape,” stated Ashton. “You will pass from this hell of water into the hell of fire and brimstone.”
“Have it your own way,” said Blake. “I lived one summer in Death Valley. The other place can’t be much hotter.”
He climbed up the ledges and planted the level firmly on its tripod above the high-water mark of the spring floods. He called down to Ashton: “Hate to leave the old monkey up here; but it will serve as a memento of our present visit, when we come down again to locate the tunnel head.”
“How can it be that we shall ever come down again?” replied Ashton. “It is impossible––for we shall never go up.”
Blake jumped down the ledges to him and pointed to the column of smoke on the lofty heights.
“Look there,” he said. “That is where we are going, if there is any possible way to go. An optimist322would stand here and wait, certain that wings would soon sprout for him to fly up; a pessimist would sit down and quit. An optimist is a fool; a pessimist is a worse fool.”
“And which are you?” asked Ashton.
“I am neither. I am a meliorist. I am going to face the facts, and then fight for all I’m worth. What’s more, you’re going to do the same. Come! We’ve still got some clothes left, the rod for you to use as a staff, this rope, the revolver, and seventeen cartridges. It’s fortunate we have any. We’ve got to signal that we are going on down the cañon, instead of back up.”
“We may as well stay and die here. But since you prefer to keep moving, I have no objections,” said Ashton, with ironical politeness.
Blake promptly stepped into the water and led the way to the next shelf of rock. Here he fired a shot. Going a few yards farther along the rocks, he fired again. Three times he fired, at intervals of two minutes. Then the white dot of the flag appeared on the precipice brink directly up across from him.
“Once more, and we’re sure they understand,” he said.
Advancing a full hundred yards on down the cañon, he fired the fourth shot. Very soon the fleck of white flaunted on the rim a little way beyond them.
“They understand!” cried Blake. “Trust Jenny323to use her head! Now catch your breath and tighten up. We’re going to move!”
He started, and Ashton followed close behind. It was the same rough, fierce game of leaping, crawling, wading, swimming,––battling with the river, the rocks, the ledges. But now they were no longer checked and halted by the alternate stoppings for set-ups and turning-points, and no longer was Blake encumbered with the care of the level. There was nothing now to hinder or delay them except the natural obstacles of their wild path down the bed of the torrent.
Blake could give all his thought to picking the best and quickest way through rapids and falls, over the water-washed rocks and along the side ledges. And he could give all his great strength to helping his companion past the hard places. In return Ashton gave such help as he could to the engineer, many times when a steadying hand or the outstretched rod rendered easier a descent or the fording of some swift mill race in the stream.
At the end of the first quarter-mile Blake had fired a shot, and again at the second quarter. After that he waited longer intervals. He considered it advisable to husband the few remaining cartridges.
The river was now rapidly rising. But every inch of added depth found the two fugitives much farther down the cañon. In two hours they advanced thrice the distance that they had covered in the same time324before noon, and this despite the increasing depth and force of the river.
The pace was so hot that Ashton was beginning to stumble and slip, but Blake kept by him and helped him along by word and deed. He asserted and repeated a dozen times over, that they were nearing the place where an ascent of the precipices might be possible. At last they rounded a turn in the winding chasm, and Blake was able to point to a break in the sheer wall on the Dry Mesa side, where the precipices were set back one above the other in a Cyclopean stepladder and their steeply-pitched faces were rough with crevices and shelves.
“Look!” he cried. “There’s the place––there’s our ladder up from hell to heaven!”
Ashton soon lowered his weary head. He stared dully downstream to where a fifty-foot cliff extended across from side to side of the cañon like a dam.
“Part of the wall slid in,” he stated with the simplicity of one who is nearing exhaustion.
“That shall be our bridge to the ladder,” shouted Blake. “It’s all sheer cliff along here at the foot of the break, but the ledges run down sideways to the top of the cross cliff. We shall soon be lying up there, high and dry, getting our second wind for the run up the ladder.”
The engineer spoke confidently, and felt what he spoke. But as they struggled on down the turbulent325stream to the cross cliff, the light left his face. From wall to wall of the cañon the great mass of fallen rock stretched across the bottom in a sheer-faced barrier, broken only by a tunnel barely large enough to suck in the swelling volume of the river.
Blake came down close to the intake, scanning every foot of the cliff face for a scalable break or crevice. There was none to be found. He climbed along the cliff foot to a low shelf beside the roaring tunnel, and stood staring at the opening in deep thought. Even while he looked, the swelling volume of the river filled the tunnel to its roof. Blake peered at the fresh watermark twenty feet up the face of the cliff, and bent down beside Ashton, who had stretched out to rest on the shelf of rock.
“There’s only one thing to it, old man,” he said. “We must dive through that tunnel.”
“Through that hole?” gasped Ashton. “No! I’ve done enough. I shall stay here.”
“To drown like a rat in a rainwater barrel!” rejoined Blake. “Look at that watermark. The tunnel is now running full. Inside a quarter-hour the river will be up over this ledge. It will keep rising till it reaches that mark, and it will not fall until after low water.”
“What do I care?” said Ashton hopelessly. “Go to the devil your own way. I’d rather drown here than in that underground hole. Leave me alone.”326
Blake considered a full half minute, looked up the cliff face, and replied: “Perhaps it’s as well. I shall do the best I can. But first I want to tell you I’ve wiped out all that past affair. You are another person from that Lafayette Ashton. We stand here almost face to face with the Unknown. One or both of us may soon go out into the Darkness. As we may never meet again, I wish to tell you that you have proved yourself, even more than I hoped when I saw you come rushing down the ravine to join me. You have proved yourself a man. Good-by.”
He held out his hand. But Ashton turned his face to the wall of rock and was silent. After a time he heard the sound of Blake’s worn heels on the outer end of the shelf. His ears, attuned to the ceaseless tumult of the waters, caught the click of the protruded heel-nail heads. There was a brief pause––then the plunge. He looked about quickly and saw Blake’s hands vanish in the down-sucking eddy where the swollen waters drew into the now hidden intake of the tunnel.
A cry of horror burst from his heaving chest. Blake had gone––Blake the iron-limbed, iron-hearted man. He had conquered the river––and now the wild waters had seized him and were mauling and smashing and crushing him in the terrible mill of the cavern. Beyond that underground passage, it might be miles away, the victor would fling up on some fanged rock a shapeless mass that once had been a man.