Out Of The Depths Part 41

"You would?"

"Yes. You see how much I like her. You rid her of him, and I'll let you have her for doing it."

Ashton shuddered.

"Think it over--and watch him mighty close tonight," advised the tempter.

A red flush leaped into Ashton's face. Gowan struck his spurs into his horse's flank and loped away.

Ashton stood motionless. The puncher disappeared down the mountain side. The twilight faded and darkness closed down about the tortured man. He stood there motionless, his convulsed face alternately flushing and paling, his eyes now clouding, now burning with rage and hate.

When at last he returned to the camp he kept beyond the circle of firelight. Hurriedly he rolled up in his blankets for the night, muttering something about his head and his need of rest for the next day's work. The others accepted the explanation without question. They formed a cheerful domestic group about the fire from which he was shut out by his pa.s.sion.

The ladies withdrew into the tent at an early hour. Blake strolled around the camp until after nine o'clock, but finally came with his blankets and companionably rolled up near Ashton. He was soon fast asleep. But Ashton lay tossing until after midnight. Weariness at last weighed down the lids of his hot eyes and numbed his tortured brain. He sank into a feverish sleep haunted with evil dreams.

CHAPTER XXIV

BLIND LOVE

At sunrise the hara.s.sed dreamer awoke to find Gowan gazing down at him somberly.

"You--you here?" he exclaimed, starting up on his elbow. "What is--" He checked himself and muttered brokenly, "I've been dreaming--horrible nightmares."

"He's down there overhauling his outfit," said Gowan. "Hope you've thought the matter over."

"My answer must be the same. I cannot do it, I cannot!" replied Ashton. He spoke hurriedly, as if afraid to linger on the thought.

"You can't--not to save her and have me give her to you?" asked Gowan.

Ashton clenched his hands and bent over in an agony of doubt and indecision.

"You devil!" he groaned.

"What! Because I'm willing to give her up, in order to see her saved?"

"Why don't you shoot him, if you're so anxious?" queried Ashton.

"And hang for it," retorted the puncher. "You can do it with an accident, and no risk. Anyway, that'll make things easier for his wife--to have him meet a natural death. Won't be anything said about why he was taken off. She hasn't begun to suspect what's going on between him and--"

Gowan paused, looked at the tent, and concluded: "I've done my part. I won't say any more. But just you remember what I've told you. You won't run any risk. Mr. Knowles hasn't come back yet. There'll be only them and me along, and we won't be able to see you do it. Just remember what it will mean to her--just remember that--when you get him where a shove or a loosened spike--Savvy?"

He went to loosen the diamond hitch of the packs that he had brought with him from the ranch. Ashton sank back and lay brooding until the girl came from the tent and called to inquire how he felt. Too wretched to care about his appearance, he rose and went over to her.

"Oh!" she exclaimed at sight of his haggard face. "You are ill!"

"Only an attack of indigestion and loss of sleep--something I often have," he lied. "A cup of coffee will set me up. Don't worry. I'm strong--head doesn't bother me at all this morning, except a numb feeling inside."

"I shall dress the wound at once, while the coffee is boiling," she replied.

He would have objected. She silenced him with a look that acted on his chafed spirit like oil upon a burn. Her kind, almost tender voice and the soft touch of her fingers on his head soothed his anguish and seemed to counteract the poison instilled by Gowan. He began to doubt the puncher and the witness of his own eyes.

When Blake and his wife came to breakfast, Ashton was so cheerful that they hardly noticed the traces of haggardness that yet lingered in his face. Blake at once centered the attention of all by explaining his plans for the exploration of the canon. In addition to the surveyor's chain, a hammer, and the rope and spikes,--which were to be used only in making the descent,--he and Ashton were to carry the level and rod and a quant.i.ty of food. At the suggestion of Isobel, he agreed to take her father's revolver and fire it at intervals, on the chance that the watchers above might see the flash of the shots and so be able to follow the progress of the explorers down in the depths.

Genevieve quickly thought out signals to be given in response. If at night, a torch was to be cast down into the chasm; if in the daytime, a white flag, made of a sheet sent by Yuki, was to be waved out over the brink. As the explorers might become confused in the gloom of the canon bottom, the point of the bend opposite Dry Fork Gulch was to be marked by a beacon fire built on the verge of the canon wall.

Blake had already arranged everything that he and Ashton were to take down with them. Immediately after breakfast the outfit was fastened on the packhorses, together with food, water and blankets for those who were to remain on the heights. The ladies were determined to keep above the explorers at all points where the rim of the canon could be approached. Gowan was to fetch and carry for them and take the horses down to the pool for water at night.

Within half an hour after breakfast the party was jogging away from camp, fully equipped for the great undertaking. Gowan was afoot. His horse, as well as the regular pack animals, was heavily loaded with stores. He walked with Isobel, who had insisted that Ashton should ride her pony. Blake strode along at his wife's stirrup, carrying his son in a clasp as tender as it was strong.

The engineer was the only cheerful member of the party. Even Thomas Herbert, that best tempered of babies, was peevish and fretful. He was instinctively reflexing the suppressed nervousness and anxiety of his mother. Gowan and Ashton were as gloomy in look and speech as the shadowy depths of the canon. Isobel bravely sought to respond to Blake's confidence in the favorable outcome of the survey; but her smile, like Genevieve's, was forced and her eyes were troubled.

They reached the point of attack as the rays of the morning sun were beginning to strike down into the side gorge. This was as Blake had planned. He at once began to direct the preparations for the descent, himself doing the lion's share of the work.

A long detour to a point higher up the ravine offered an easy descent of its bottom to the place where it pitched steeply into the canon.

Blake preferred to take a short cut down the almost vertical side of the gulch. The three pieces of rope, each a hundred feet long, were knotted together and used to lower a gra.s.s-padded package containing all the equipment of the explorers except the level. The bundle was lodged on a broad shelf of rock, over two hundred and fifty feet down.

"Our first measurement," remarked Blake, as he subtracted from three hundred feet the length of the line left above the edge of the cliff.

He jotted down the remainder in his notebook, and nodded to Ashton, who, with Gowan and Isobel, was holding the end of the rope. "You see why I had Mr. Gowan bring gloves and chaps and your leggins. We will make the line fast around that rock, and follow our outfit."

Ashton stared, slack jawed. "Really, you cannot mean--?"

"Yes. Why not?" asked Blake. "There's nothing to a slide like this except the look of it."

"Oh, Tom!" breathlessly cried Genevieve. "Are you sure--quite sure!"

"Sure I'm sure, little woman," he replied. "There's not the slightest danger. This is a new manila rope, and the package, with all those spikes in it, weighs as much as I do. That gives us a sure test."

"I might have known!" she sighed her relief.

"Still it does look a bit stiff for a start-off," he admitted. "If Lafe prefers, he can go around and come down the ravine bed. I shall slide the line and be getting the outfit in shape for shooting the chutes."

"How about the rope?" asked Isobel.

"You are to drop it to me as soon as I get down and stand from under,"

directed Blake. He examined with minute care the loop and knot with which Gowan and Isobel had made the rope fast around the point of rock. Having satisfied himself that the knot was perfectly secure, he turned to his wife and opened his arms. "Now, Sweetheart! Wish us good luck and a quick journey!"

Gowan and Ashton drew back and looked away as Genevieve flung herself on her husband's broad chest, unable to restrain her tears.

"Now, now, little woman," he soothed, patting her shoulder. "There's nothing to be afraid of, and you know it."

"If--if only we could see you down there!" she sobbed.

"You will, part of the time, with your gla.s.ses. And you'll be sure to see the flash of some of my shots. That's all that I'm worrying about--you'll be skirting along the canon rim. Promise me you'll not go near the edge except where the footing is perfectly safe."

"Yes, Dear. I shall have Thomas to remind me to be careful. But you?"