said, with determination, "the wife and me are
goin' over on this here cable of yours! Will you run it for us?"

Jerry backed slightly away. He did it unconsciously, as if recoiling
instinctively from something unwelcome.

"Better see if Hall's back," he suggested.

"And if he ain't?"

Again Jerry hesitated.

"I'll stand for the risk," Spillane added. "Don't you see, kid, we've
simply got to cross!"

Jerry nodded his head reluctantly.

"And there ain't no use waitin' for Hall," Spillane went on. "You know
as well as me he ain't back from Cripple Cow this time of day! So come
along and let's get started."

No wonder that Mrs. Spillane seemed terrified as they helped her
into the ore-car--so Jerry thought, as he gazed into the apparently
fathomless gulf beneath her. For it was so filled with rain and cloud,
hurtling and curling in the fierce blast, that the other shore, seven
hundred feet away, was invisible, while the cliff at their feet dropped
sheer down and lost itself in the swirling vapor. By all appearances it
might be a mile to bottom instead of two hundred feet.

"All ready?" he asked.

"Let her go!" Spillane shouted, to make himself heard above the roar of
the wind.

He had clambered in beside his wife, and was holding one of her hands in
his.

Jerry looked upon this with disapproval. "You'll need all your hands for
holdin' on, the way the wind's yowlin.'"

The man and the woman shifted their hands accordingly, tightly gripping
the sides of the car, and Jerry slowly and carefully released the brake.
The drum began to revolve as the endless cable passed round it, and the
car slid slowly out into the chasm, its trolley wheels rolling on the
stationary cable overhead, to which it was suspended.

It was not the first time Jerry had worked the cable, but it was the
first time he had done so away from the supervising eye of his father.
By means of the brake he regulated the speed of the car. It needed
regulating, for at times, caught by the stronger gusts of wind, it
swayed violently back and forth; and once, just before it was swallowed
up in a rain squall, it seemed about to spill out its human contents.

After that Jerry had no way of knowing where the car was except by means
of the cable. This he watched keenly as it glided around the drum.
"Three hundred feet," he breathed to himself, as the cable markings went
by, "three hundred and fifty, four hundred; four hundred and----"

The cable had