semi-circular
bluff; then she stopped at the foot of an arid gully that rose between
this basin and a small shoulder which supported the first needle. This was
the stairway she had seen Tisdale descend, and presently she commenced to
climb it slowly, grasping bunches of the tenacious sage or jutting points
of rock to ease her weight.

The stairs ended in a sharp incline covered with debris from the
decomposing pillars; splinters of granite shifted under her tread; she
felt the edges cutting through her shoes. Fragments began to rattle down;
one larger rock crashed over the bluff into the dry basin. Then, at last,
she was on the level, fighting for breath. She turned, trembling, and
braced herself against the broken chimney to look back. She shrank closer
to the needle and shook her head. It was as though she said: "I never
could go back alone."

But when her glance moved to the opposite mountainside, Tisdale was no
longer in sight. And that shoulder was very narrow; it presented a sheer
front to the vale, like the base of a monument, so that between the
chimney and the drop to the gully there was little room in which to stand.
She began to choose a course, picking her foothold cautiously, zigzagging
as she had seen Hollis do on the slope above. Midway another knob jutted,
supporting a second pillar and a single pine tree, but as she came under
the chimney she was forced to hurry. Loose chippings of granite started at
every step. They formed little torrents, undermining, rushing, threatening
to sweep her down; and she reached the ledge in a panic. Then she felt the
stable security of the pine against her body and for a moment let herself
go, sinking to the foot of the tree and covering her eyes with her hands.

Up there a stiff wind was blowing, and presently she saw the snow-peak she
had missed in the vale. The ridge lifted less abruptly from this second
spur, and in a little while she rose and pushed on, lagging sometimes,
stumbling, to the level of the plateau. The Wenatchee range, of which it
was a part, stretched bleak and forbidding, enclosing all those minor arid
gulfs down to the final, long, scarred headland set against the Columbia
desert. She was like a woman stranded, the last survivor, on an
inhospitable coast. Turning to look across the valley of the Wenatchee,
she saw the blue and glaciered crests of the Chelan mountains, and behind
her, over the neck of a loftier height, loomed other white domes. And
t