ther was lying. She could not see it. The point upon which the
falling man had struck shut off her view. The other side of the split
rock was where she and Genevieve had looked down through the glasses
and seen Blake. She failed to realize the difference in the change of
position. Her horror deepened. She thought that Gowan had hurled
straight down to the bottom with all the terrific velocity of that
sheer drop, and that he had plunged upon the fire and upon the dear
form outstretched beside it, to crush and mangle and be crushed and
mangled. The thought was too frightful for human endurance.

A long time she lay in a swoon, her head on the very edge of the
brink. It was the wailing of the hungry, frightened baby that at last
called her back to life and action. She dragged herself up around to
the hiding place. The neglected baby was not easy to quiet. The cream
had soured. There was nothing that she could give him except water.
All the eggs that were left she had put in the knapsack that Ashton
was carrying down to her brother. The baby now showed the full reflex
of his mother's long hours of anxiety and fear. He fretted and cried
and would not be comforted.

The chill of approaching dawn forced her to rebuild the outburnt fire.
The warm glow and the play of the flames diverted the child and hushed
his outcry. Holding him so that he might continue to watch the dancing
tongues of fire, the girl sat motionless, going over and over again in
her mind all that had occurred since the tattered, bleeding,
purple-faced climber had come straining up out of the depths.... It
could not have happened--it was all a hideous dream.... Would they
never come? Must she sit here forever--alone!

CHAPTER XXXIII

FRIENDS IN NEED

Because of the moonlight she did not heed the graying of the east. But
the whinnying of the picketed horses roused her from the apathy of
misery into which she had sunk. She stood up and looked along the
ridge. A small roundish object appeared above the crest--then others.
They rose quickly--the heads of riders spurring their horses up the
far side of the ridge.

Singly, in pairs, in groups, the rescuers burst up into view and came
loping down to her, shouting and waving. In the lead rode her father
and the sheriff; in the midst Genevieve, between two attendant young
punchers. In all, there were nearly two dozen eager, resolute men,
everyone an admiring friend of Miss Chuckie, everyone zealous to ser