Bob Hampton of Placer. Randall Parrish
to take you along with me."
She snatched her hand roughly away, yet remained facing him. "Who gave you any right to decide what I should do?"
The man clasped his fingers tightly about her slender arm, advancing his face until he could look squarely into hers. She read in the lines of that determined countenance an inflexible resolve which overmastered her.
"The right given by Almighty God to protect any one of your sex in peril," he replied. "Before dawn those savage fiends will be upon us. We are utterly helpless. There remains only one possible path for escape, and I believe I have discovered it. Now, my girl, you either climb those rocks with me, or I shall kill you where you are. It is that, or the Sioux torture. I have two shots left in this gun—one for you, the other for myself. The time has come for deciding which of these alternatives you prefer."
The gleam of a star glittered along the steel of his revolver, and she realized that he meant what he threatened.
"If I select your bullet rather than the rocks, what then?"
"You will get it, but in that case you will die like a fool."
"You have believed me to be one, all this afternoon."
"Possibly," he admitted; "your words and actions certainly justified some such conclusion, but the opportunity has arrived for causing me to revise that suspicion."
"I don't care to have you, revise it, Mr. Bob Hampton. If I go, I shall hate you just the same."
Hampton's teeth clicked like those of an angry dog. "Hate and be damned," he exclaimed roughly. "All I care about now is to drag you out of here alive."
His unaffected sincerity impressed her more than any amount of pleading. She was long accustomed to straight talk; it always meant business, and her untutored nature instantly responded with a throb of confidence.
"Well, if you put it that way," she said, "I 'll go."
For one breathless moment neither stirred. Then a single wild yell rang sharply forth from the rocks in their front, and a rifle barked savagely, its red flame cleaving the darkness with tongue of fire. An instant and the impenetrable gloom again surrounded them.
"Come on, then," he whispered, his fingers grasping her sleeve.
She shook off the restraining touch of his hand as if it were contamination, and sank down upon her knees beside the inert body. He could barely perceive the dim outlines of her bowed figure, yet never moved, his breath perceptibly quickening, while he watched and waited. Without word or moan she bent yet lower, and pressed her lips upon the cold, white face. The man caught no more than the faintest echo of a murmured "Good-bye, old dad; I wish I could take you with me." Then she stood stiffly upright, facing him. "I'm ready now," she announced calmly. "You can go on ahead."
They crept among low shrubs and around the bowlders, carefully guarding every slightest movement lest some rustle of disturbed foliage, or sound of loosened stone, might draw the fire of those keen watchers. Nor dared they ignore the close proximity of their own little company, who, amid such darkness, might naturally suspect them for approaching savages. Every inch of their progress was attained through tedious groping, yet the distance to be traversed was short, and Hampton soon found himself pressing against the uprising precipice. Passing his fingers along the front, he finally found that narrow ledge which he had previously located with such patient care, and reaching back, drew the girl silently upon her feet beside him. Against that background of dark cliff they might venture to stand erect, the faint glimmer of reflected light barely sufficient to reveal to each the shadowy outline of the other.
"Don't move an inch from this spot," he whispered. "It wouldn't be a square deal, Kid, to leave those poor fellows to their death without even telling them there's a chance to get out."
She attempted no reply, as he glided noiselessly away, but her face, could he have seen it, was not devoid of expression. This was an act of generosity and deliberate courage of the very kind most apt to appeal to her nature, and within her secret heart there was rapidly developing a respect for this man, who with such calm assurance won his own way. He was strong, forceful, brave—Homeric virtues of real worth in that hard life which she knew best. All this swept across her mind in a flash of revelation while she stood alone, her eyes endeavoring vainly to peer into the gloom. Then, suddenly, that black curtain was rent by jagged spurts of red and yellow flame. Dazed for an instant, her heart throbbing wildly to the sharp reports of the rifles, she shrank cowering back, her fascinated gaze fixed on those imp-like figures leaping forward from rock to rock. Almost with the flash and sound Hampton sprang hastily back and gathered her in his arms.
"Catch hold, Kid, anywhere; only go up, and quick!"
As he thus lifted her she felt the irregularities of rock beneath her clutching fingers, and scrambled instinctively forward along the narrow shelf, and then, reaching higher, her groping hands clasped the roots of a projecting cedar. She retained no longer any memory for Hampton; her brain was completely terrorized. Inch by inch, foot by foot, clinging to a fragment of rock here, grasping a slippery branch there, occasionally helped by encountering a deeper gash in the face of the precipice, her movements concealed by the scattered cedars, she toiled feverishly up, led by instinct, like any wild animal desperately driven by fear, and only partially conscious of the real dread of her terrible position. The first time she became aware that Hampton was closely following was when her feet slipped along a naked root, and she would have plunged headlong into unknown depths had she not come into sudden contact with his supporting shoulder. Faint and dizzy, and trembling like the leaf of an aspen, she crept forward onto a somewhat wider ledge of thin rock, and lay there quivering painfully from head to foot. A moment of suspense, and he was outstretched beside her, resting at full length along the very outer edge, his hand closing tightly over her own.
"Remain perfectly quiet," he whispered, panting heavily. "We can be no safer anywhere else."
She could distinguish the rapid pounding of his heart as well as her own, mingled with the sharp intake of their heavy breathing, but these sounds were soon overcome by that of the tumult below. Shots and yells, the dull crash of blows, the shouts of men engaged in a death grapple, the sharp crackling of innumerable rifles, the inarticulate moans of pain, the piercing scream of sudden torture, were borne upward to them from out the blackness. They did not venture to lift their heads from off the hard rock; the girl sobbed silently, her slender form trembling; the fingers of the man closed more tightly about her hand. All at once the hideous uproar ceased with a final yelping of triumph, seemingly reechoed the entire length of the chasm, in the midst of which one single voice pleaded pitifully—only to die away in a shriek. The two agonized fugitives lay listening, their ears strained to catch the slightest sound from below. The faint radiance of a single star glimmered along the bald front of the cliff, but Hampton, peering cautiously across the edge, could distinguish nothing. His ears could discern evidences of movement, and he heard guttural voices calling at a distance, but to the vision all was black. The distance those faint sounds appeared away made his head reel, and he shrank cowering back against the girl's body, closing his eyes and sinking his head upon his arm.
These uncertain sounds ceased, the strained ears of the fugitives heard the crashing of bodies through the thick shrubbery, and then even this noise died away in the distance. Yet neither ventured to stir or speak. It may be that the girl slept fitfully, worn out by long vigil and intense strain; but the man proved less fortunate, his eyes staring out continually into the black void, his thoughts upon other days long vanished but now brought back in all their bitterness by the mere proximity of this helpless waif who had fallen into his care. His features were drawn and haggard when the first gray dawn found ghastly reflection along the opposite rock summit, and with blurred eyes he watched the faint tinge of returning light steal downward into the canyon. At last it swept aside those lower clinging mists, as though some invisible hand had drawn back the night curtains, and he peered over the edge of his narrow resting-place, gazing directly down upon the scene of massacre. With a quick gasp of unspeakable horror he shrank so sharply back as to cause the suddenly awakened girl to start and glance into his face.
"What is it?" she questioned, with quick catching of breath, reading