girl down thar, an' I'll risk it fer
her."

"You'll go then?"

"Sure; didn't I just tell you so?"

Brennan wheeled about.

"Give him his gun, Jim, and the belt," he commanded briefly. "I don't
send no man into a fracas like this unless he's heeled. Leave yer
coats here, an' take it slow. Both of yer ready?"

Not until his dying day will Westcott ever forget the moment he hung
dangling over the edge of that pit, following Moore who had
disappeared, and felt gingerly in the darkness for the narrow rock
ledge below. The young miner possessed imagination, and could not
drive from memory the mental picture of those depths beneath; the
horror was like a nightmare, and yet the one dominant thought was not
of an awful death, of falling headlong, to be crushed shapeless
hundreds of feet below. This dread was there, an intense agony at
first, but beyond it arose the more important thought of what would
become of her if he failed to attain the bottom of that cliff alive.
Yet this was the very thing which steadied him, and brought back his
courage.

At best they could only creep, feeling a way blindly from crag to crag,
clinging desperately to every projection, never venturing even the
slightest movement until either hand or loot found solid support.
Moore led, his boyish recklessness and knowledge of the way, giving him
an advantage. Westcott followed, keeping as close as possible,
endeavouring to shape his own efforts in accordance with the dimly
outlined form below; while Brennan, short-legged and stout, probably
had the hardest task of all in bringing up the rear.

No one spoke, except as occasionally Moore sent back a brief whisper of
warning at some spot of unusual danger, but they could hear each
other's laboured breathing, the brushing of their clothing against the
surface of the rock, the scraping of their feet, and occasionally the
faint tinkle of a small stone, dislodged by their passage and striking
far below. There was nothing but intense blackness down there--a
hideous chasm of death clutching at them; the houses, the men, the
whole valley was completely swallowed in the night.

Above it all they clung to the almost smooth face of the cliff,
gripping for support at every crevice, the rock under them barely wide
enough to yield purchase to their feet. Twice Westcott had to let go
entirely, trusting to a ledge below to stop his fail; once he travelled
a yard, or more, dangling on his hands over the ab