through with him yit!" By this time Pete had
the end of the rawhide rope in his hands and was testing the strength of
its anchorage upon the opposite cliff. The point where it was fastened
projected some distance over the ledge, where the supposed landing-place
was located, thus making it possible for one to swing at the end of the
rope from our side without danger of coming into too violent contact
with the opposite cliff.

As soon as my big friend was satisfied that the rope was safe he
grasped it with his two hands, and with one foot in the loop and the
other free to use as a fender, he sailed across the abyss and landed
safely upon the crumbling ledge opposite.

Holding fast to the rawhide rope with his hands and bracing his feet
against the rock, Pete could walk up the face of the cliff by going
hand-over-hand up the cable at the same time. He had almost reached the
top when I was horror-stricken to see a small hand and brown arm reach
over the precipice; but it was neither the grace nor the beauty of this
shapely bit of anatomy which sent the blood surging to my heart, but the
fact that the cold gray glint of a long-bladed knife caught my eyes and
fascinated me with the fabled "charm" of a serpent. The power of speech
forsook me, but with great effort I succeeded in giving utterance to the
inarticulate noise people gurgle when confronted in their sleep by a
shapeless horror. Big Pete heard the noise, but he was not unnerved
when he saw the knife, neither did he show any nightmare symptoms,
although he was dangling over the terrible abyss with a full knowledge
that it needed but a touch of the keen blade of that knife to sever the
straining lariat and dash him, a mangled mass, on the rocks below. The
danger was too real to give Pete the nightmare; there was nothing spooky
to him in the glittering knife blade, and only ghosts and the
supernatural could give Big Pete the nightmare. Calmly he looked at the
hand grasping the power of death with its strong tapering fingers.
Suddenly and in a firm, commanding voice he gave the order, "Drap tha'
knife!"

Ever since I had been in the company of this masterful forest companion
I had obeyed his commands as a matter of course, and so was not
surprised to see the fingers instantly relax their grasp and the knife
go gyrating to the mysterious depths. In a few moments Big Pete was up
and over the edge of the rock and hidden from my view.

Seizing the long-handled shepherd's