below them! Go
back--bring fire and rope."

Ashton ran back to fetch the rope and a dozen blazing sticks.
Driftwood was strewn all around. In a minute he had a fire started
against the butt end of the log. He began to gather a pile of fuel.
But Blake checked him with a cheerful--"That's enough, old man. I can
manage now. Take the rope, and go."

When Ashton had coiled the rope over his shoulder and under the
opposite arm, he came and stood before his prostrate companion. His
face was scarlet with shame.

"I have been a fool--and worse," he said. "I doubted her. I am utterly
unfit to live. If I were alone down here, I would stay and rot. But
you are her brother. If it is possible to get up there, I am going
up."

"You are going up!" encouraged Blake. "You will make it. Give my love
to them. Tell them I'm doing fine."

He held out his hand.

"No," said Ashton. "I'd give anything if I could grip hands with you.
But I cannot. You are her brother. I am unfit to touch your hand."

He turned and ran up the precipice-foot to the first steep ascent of
the steeple-sloped break in the wall of the abyss.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE CLIMBER

A day of anxiety, only partly relieved by those tiny flashes of light
so far, far down in the awful depths; then the long night of ceaseless
watching. Neither Genevieve nor Isobel had been able to sleep during
those hours when no flash signaled up to them from the abysmal
darkness.

Then at last, a full hour after dawn on the mesa top, the down-peering
wife had caught the flash that told of the renewal of the exploration.
As throughout the previous day, Gowan brought the ladies food and
whatever else they needed. Only the needs of the baby had power to
draw its mother away from the canyon edge. Isobel moved always along
the giddy verge wherever she could cling to it, following the unseen
workers in the depths.

On his first trip to the ranch, the puncher had brought Genevieve's
field glasses--an absurdly small instrument of remarkable power. Three
times the first day and twice the second morning she and Isobel had
the joy of seeing their loved ones creeping along the abyss bottom at
places where the sun pierced down through the gloom. They missed
other chances because the canyon edge was not everywhere so easily
approachable.

Many times the flash of Blake's revolver passed unseen by them.
Sometimes they had been forced away from the brink; sometimes the
depths were cut off f