Out of the Depths

by Bennet, Robert Ames

  He went to loosen the diamond hitch of the packs that he had brought with him from the ranch. Ashton sank back and lay brooding until the girl came from the tent and called to inquire how he felt. Too wretched to care about his appearance, he rose and went over to her.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed at sight of his haggard face. “You are ill!”

  “Only an attack of indigestion and loss of sleep––something I often have,” he lied. “A cup of coffee will set me up. Don’t worry. I’m strong––head doesn’t bother me at all this morning, except a numb feeling inside.”

  “I shall dress the wound at once, while the coffee is boiling,” she replied.

  He would have objected. She silenced him with a look that acted on his chafed spirit like oil upon a burn. Her kind, almost tender voice and the soft touch of her fingers on his head soothed his anguish and seemed to counteract the poison instilled by Gowan. He began to doubt the puncher and the witness of his own eyes.

  When Blake and his wife came to breakfast, Ashton was so cheerful that they hardly noticed the traces of haggardness that yet lingered in his face. Blake at once centered the attention of all by explaining his plans for the exploration of the cañon. In addition to the surveyor’s chain, a hammer, and the rope and spikes,––which were to be used only in making the descent,––he and Ashton were to carry the level and rod and a quantity of food. At the suggestion of Isobel, he agreed to take her father’s revolver and fire it at intervals, on the chance that the watchers above might see the flash of the shots and so be able to follow the progress of the explorers down in the depths.

  Genevieve quickly thought out signals to be given in response. If at night, a torch was to be cast down into the chasm; if in the daytime, a white flag, made of a sheet sent by Yuki, was to be waved out over the brink. As the explorers might become confused in the gloom of the cañon bottom, the point of the bend opposite Dry Fork Gulch was to be marked by a beacon fire built on the verge of the cañon wall.

  Blake had already arranged everything that he and Ashton were to take down with them. Immediately after breakfast the outfit was fastened on the packhorses, together with food, water and blankets for those who were to remain on the heights. The ladies were determined to keep above the explorers at all points where the rim of the cañon could be approached. Gowan was to fetch and carry for them and take the horses down to the pool for water at night.

  Within half an hour after breakfast the party was jogging away from camp, fully equipped for the great undertaking. Gowan was afoot. His horse, as well as the regular pack animals, was heavily loaded with stores. He walked with Isobel, who had insisted that Ashton should ride her pony. Blake strode along at his wife’s stirrup, carrying his son in a clasp as tender as it was strong.

  The engineer was the only cheerful member of the party. Even Thomas Herbert, that best tempered of babies, was peevish and fretful. He was instinctively reflexing the suppressed nervousness and anxiety of his mother. Gowan and Ashton were as gloomy in look and speech as the shadowy depths of the cañon. Isobel bravely sought to respond to Blake’s confidence in the favorable outcome of the survey; but her smile, like Genevieve’s, was forced and her eyes were troubled.

  They reached the point of attack as the rays of the morning sun were beginning to strike down into the side gorge. This was as Blake had planned. He at once began to direct the preparations for the descent, himself doing the lion’s share of the work.

  A long detour to a point higher up the ravine offered an easy descent of its bottom to the place where it pitched steeply into the cañon. Blake preferred to take a short cut down the almost vertical side of the gulch. The three pieces of rope, each a hundred feet long, were knotted together and used to lower a grass-padded package containing all the equipment of the explorers except the level. The bundle was lodged on a broad shelf of rock, over two hundred and fifty feet down.

  “Our first measurement,” remarked Blake, as he subtracted from three hundred feet the length of the line left above the edge of the cliff. He jotted down the remainder in his notebook, and nodded to Ashton, who, with Gowan and Isobel, was holding the end of the rope. “You see why I had Mr. Gowan bring gloves and chaps and your leggins. We will make the line fast around that rock, and follow our outfit.”

  Ashton stared, slack jawed. “Really, you cannot mean––?”

  “Yes. Why not?” asked Blake. “There’s nothing to a slide like this except the look of it.”

  “Oh, Tom!” breathlessly cried Genevieve. “Are you sure––quite sure!”

  “Sure I’m sure, little woman,” he replied. “There’s not the slightest danger. This is a new manila rope, and the package, with all those spikes in it, weighs as much as I do. That gives us a sure test.”

  “I might have known!” she sighed her relief.

  “Still it does look a bit stiff for a start-off,” he admitted. “If Lafe prefers, he can go around and come down the ravine bed. I shall slide the line and be getting the outfit in shape for shooting the chutes.”

  “How about the rope?” asked Isobel.

  “You are to drop it to me as soon as I get down and stand from under,” directed Blake. He examined with minute care the loop and knot with which Gowan and Isobel had made the rope fast around the point of rock. Having satisfied himself that the knot was perfectly secure, he turned to his wife and opened his arms. “Now, Sweetheart! Wish us good luck and a quick journey!”

  Gowan and Ashton drew back and looked away as Genevieve flung herself on her husband’s broad chest, unable to restrain her tears.

  “Now, now, little woman,” he soothed, patting her shoulder. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, and you know it.”

  “If––if only we could see you down there!” she sobbed.

  “You will, part of the time, with your glasses. And you’ll be sure to see the flash of some of my shots. That’s all that I’m worrying about––you’ll be skirting along the cañon rim. Promise me you’ll not go near the edge except where the footing is perfectly safe.”

  “Yes, Dear. I shall have Thomas to remind me to be careful. But you?”

  “I shall have the thought of you both to keep me from being rash. Remember that.”

  “You will not be rash, I know,” she answered, smiling up at him bravely. “You will go and come back to us soon. Now kiss me and Thomas. I shall not detain you from your work.”

  “Spoken like my partner,” he quietly praised her.

  Both by tone and manner he was plainly seeking to ease the parting to the calmness of an ordinary farewell. His wife responded to this, outwardly at least. Not so Isobel. From the moment he had turned to Genevieve, the girl had betrayed a rapidly increasing agitation.

  He went to kiss his baby, who had fallen asleep during the last half mile of the trip and lay sprawled in the shade of a bowlder. As he came back, Genevieve lingered beside the child, as if half fearful of watching her husband begin his dizzy descent of the rope.

  Isobel was standing close to the verge, her bosom heaving with quick-drawn breaths, her excited face flushing and paling in rapid alternation. Blake had pulled on his left glove, but had kept his right hand bare for her. As he held it out he looked up from the taut rope at his feet and saw her excessively agitated face.

  “You have something to tell me––your voice––your eyes––”

  “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, a
nd 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, and 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.”

  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 fascination that 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.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXV

  THE 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 the gorge 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 raise a 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 of her!” retorted the younger man. “I’m here to make it certain that no harm is to come to her!”

  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, we’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 do my work!” 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 the three 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 himself out 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.