Bob Hampton of Placer. Randall Parrish
cause your head to reel, and our upward climb is not yet completed. Do you feel strong enough now to make another attempt to reach the top?"
His quiet spirit of assured dominance seemed to command her obedience. With a slight shudder she glanced doubtfully up the seemingly inaccessible height.
"Can we?" she questioned helplessly.
"We can, simply because we must," and his white teeth shut together firmly. "There is no possibility of retracing our steps downward, but with the help of this daylight we surely ought to be able to discover some path leading up."
He rose cautiously to his feet, pressing her more closely against the face of the cliff, thus holding her in comparative safety while preventing her from glancing back into the dizzy chasm. The most difficult portion of their journey was apparently just before them, consisting of a series of narrow ledges, so widely separated and irregular as to require each to assist the other while passing from point to point. Beyond these a slender cleft, bordered by gnarled roots of low bushes, promised a somewhat easier and securer passage toward the summit. Hampton's face became deathly white as they began the perilous climb, but his hand remained steady, his foot sure, while the girl moved forward as if remaining unconscious of the presence of danger, apparently swayed by his dominant will to do whatsoever he bade her. More than once they tottered on the very brink, held to safety merely by desperate clutchings at rock or shrub, yet never once did the man loosen his guarding grasp of his companion. Pressed tightly against the smooth rock, feeling for every crevice, every slightest irregularity of surface, making use of creeping tendril or dead branch, daring death along every inch of the way, these two creepers at last attained the opening to the little gulley, and sank down, faint and trembling, their hands bleeding, their clothing sadly torn by the sharp ledges across which they had pulled their bodies by the sheer strength of extended arms. Hampton panted heavily from exertion, yet the old light of cool, resourceful daring had crept back into the gray eyes, while the stern lines about his lips assumed pleasanter curves. The girl glanced furtively at him, the long lashes shadowing the expression of her lowered eyes. In spite of deep prejudice she felt impelled to like this man; he accomplished things, and he didn't talk.
It was nothing more serious than a hard and toilsome climb after that, a continuous struggle testing every muscle, straining every sinew, causing both to sink down again and again, panting and exhausted, no longer stimulated by imminent peril. The narrow cleft they followed led somewhat away from the exposed front of the precipice, yet arose steep and jagged before them, a slender gash through the solid rock, up which they were often compelled to force their passage; again it became clogged with masses of debris, dead branches, and dislodged fragments of stone, across which they were obliged to struggle desperately, while once they completely halted before a sheer smoothness of rock wall that appeared impassable. It was bridged finally by a cedar trunk, which Hampton wrenched from out its rocky foothold, and the two crept cautiously forward, to emerge where the sunlight rested golden at the summit. They sank face downward in the short grass, barely conscious that they had finally won their desperate passage.
Slowly Hampton succeeded in uplifting his tired body and his reeling head, until he could sit partially upright and gaze unsteadily about. The girl yet remained motionless at his feet, her thick hair, a mass of red gold in the sunshine, completely concealing her face, her slender figure quivering to sobs of utter exhaustion. Before them stretched the barren plain, brown, desolate, drear, offering in all its wide expanse no hopeful promise of rescue, no slightest suggestion even of water, excepting a fringe of irregular trees, barely discernible against the horizon. That lorn, deserted waste, shimmering beneath the sun-rays, the heat waves already becoming manifest above the rock-strewn surface, presented a most depressing spectacle. With hand partially shading his aching eyes from the blinding glare, the man studied its every exposed feature, his face hardening again into lines of stern determination. The girl stirred from her position, flinging back her heavy hair with one hand, and looking up into his face with eyes that read at once his disappointment.
"Have—have you any water left?" she asked at last, her lips parched and burning as if from fever.
He shook the canteen dangling forgotten at his side. "There may be a few drops," he said, handing it to her, although scarcely removing his fixed gaze from off that dreary plain. "We shall be obliged to make those trees yonder; there ought to be water there in plenty, and possibly we may strike a trail."
She staggered to her feet, gripping his shoulder, and swaying a little from weakness, then, holding aside her hair, gazed long in the direction he pointed.
"I fairly shake from hunger," she exclaimed, almost angrily, "and am terribly tired and sore, but I reckon I can make it if I 've got to."
There was nothing more said between them. Like two automatons, they started off across the parched grass, the heat waves rising and falling as they stumbled forward. Neither realized until then how thoroughly that hard climb up the rocks, the strain of continued peril, and the long abstinence from food had sapped their strength, yet to remain where they were meant certain death; all hope found its centre amid those distant beckoning trees. Mechanically the girl gathered back her straying tresses, and tied them with a rag torn from her frayed skirt. Hampton noted silently how heavy and sunken her eyes were; he felt a dull pity, yet could not sufficiently arouse himself from the lethargy of exhaustion to speak. His body seemed a leaden weight, his brain a dull, inert mass; nothing was left him but an unreasoning purpose, the iron will to press on across that desolate plain, which already reeled and writhed before his aching eyes.
No one can explain later how such deeds are ever accomplished; how the tortured soul controls physical weakness, and compels strained sinews to perform the miracle of action when all ambition has died. Hampton surely must have both seen and known, for he kept his direction, yet never afterwards did he regain any clear memory of it. Twice she fell heavily, and the last time she lay motionless, her face pressed against the short grass blades. He stood looking down upon her, his head reeling beneath the hot rays of the sun, barely conscious of what had occurred, yet never becoming totally dead to his duty. Painfully he stooped, lifted the limp, slender figure against his shoulder, and went straggling forward, as uncertain in steps as a blind man, all about him stretching the dull, dead desolation of the plain. Again and again he sank down, pillowing his eyes from the pitiless sun glare; only to stagger upright once more, ever bending lower and lower beneath his unconscious burden.
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