proceeded with the line of levels on up the creek bed into the gorge
from which it issued.

For more than a mile they carried the levels over the bowlders of the
gradually sloping bottom of that stupendous gash in the mountain side.
So far the work was fairly easy. At last, however, they came to the
place where the bed of the gulch suddenly tilted upward at a sharp
angle and climbed the tremendous heights to the top of High Mesa in
sheer ascents and cliff-like ledges. Blake established a bench-mark at
the foot of the acclivity, and came forward beside Ashton to peer up
the Titanic chute between the dizzy precipices. From where they stood
to the head of the gulch was fully four thousand feet.

"What do you think of it?" asked the engineer.

"I think this is where your line ends," answered Ashton, and he rolled
a cigarette. He had been anything but agreeable since their start from
the ranch.

"We of course can't go up with the level and rod," said Blake, smiling
at the absurdity of the suggestion. "Still, we might possibly chain it
to the top."

Ashton shrugged. "I fail to see the need of risking my neck to climb
this goat stairway."

"Very well," agreed Blake, ignoring his companion's ill humor. "Kindly
take back the level and get out the chain."

Ashton started off without replying. Blake looked at the young man's
back with a regretful, half-puzzled expression. But he quickly
returned to the business in hand. He laid the level rod on a rock and
inclined it at the same steep pitch as the uptilt of the gorge bottom.
Over the lower end of this he held a plumb bob, and took the angle
between the perpendicular line of the bob-string and the inclined line
of the rod with a small protractor that he carried in his notebook.
The angle measured over fifty degrees from the horizontal.

Having thus determined the angle of inclination, the engineer picked a
likely line of ascent and started to climb the gulch chute. He went up
in rapid rushes, with the ease and surefootedness of a coolheaded,
steel-muscled climber. He stopped frequently, not because of weariness
or of lack of breath, but to test the structure and hardness of the
rocks with a small magnifying glass and the butt of his pocket knife.

At last, nearly a thousand feet up, his ascent was stopped by a sheer
hundred-foot cliff. He had seen it beetling above him and knew
beforehand that he could not hope to scale such a precipice; yet he
clambered up to it, still