Out Of The Depths Part 42

"I shall have the thought of you both to keep me from being rash.

Remember that."

"You will not be rash, I know," she answered, smiling up at him bravely. "You will go and come back to us soon. Now kiss me and Thomas. I shall not detain you from your work."

"Spoken like my partner," he quietly praised her.

Both by tone and manner he was plainly seeking to ease the parting to the calmness of an ordinary farewell. His wife responded to this, outwardly at least. Not so Isobel. From the moment he had turned to Genevieve, the girl had betrayed a rapidly increasing agitation.

He went to kiss his baby, who had fallen asleep during the last half mile of the trip and lay sprawled in the shade of a bowlder. As he came back, Genevieve lingered beside the child, as if half fearful of watching her husband begin his dizzy descent of the rope.

Isobel was standing close to the verge, her bosom heaving with quick-drawn breaths, her excited face flushing and paling in rapid alternation. Blake had pulled on his left glove, but had kept his right hand bare for her. As he held it out he looked up from the taut rope at his feet and saw her excessively agitated face.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "You have something to tell me--your voice--your eyes--"]

"Why, Miss Chuckie!" he remonstrated, "you're not going to break down now. You see how Jenny takes it. There's nothing to fear."

"Oh, but, Tom!" she panted, "you--you don't understand! you don't know! It's not merely the danger! It's the dreadful thought that if you--if you should not--come back--and I hadn't told you!"

"Told me?" he echoed in hushed wonderment as her anguished soul looked out at him through her wide eyes and he sensed the first vague foreshadowing of the truth. "You have something to tell me--your voice!--your eyes!--"

"You see it! You know me!" she gasped, and she flung herself into his arms. Straining herself to him in half frantic ecstasy, she murmured in a broken whisper: "Yes! I am--am Belle! It is wicked and selfish to tell you; but to have you go down there without first--I could not bear it! Yet I--I shall not drag you down--disgrace you. Never that!

I'll go away!... Oh, Tom! dear Tom!"

He had stood dumfounded by the revelation of her ident.i.ty. At first he could not speak; hardly could he think. His eyes stared into hers with a dazed look. But before she could finish her impa.s.sioned declaration of self-abnegation he roused from his bewilderment, and his great arms closed about her quivering body. He crushed her to him and pressed his lips upon her white forehead.

"Belle!--poor little Belle!... But why? Tell me why? All this time, and you never showed by a single word or look!"

"I did!" she sought to defend herself from the tender reproach. "I did, but I--I was afraid to tell."

"Afraid?"

The girl's face flamed scarlet with shame. She sought to draw away from him. "Let me go, Tom! oh, please, let me go! I am a selfish, wicked girl! I have done it! I have done it! Now there is no help for it! She must be told--all!"

"All?" he questioned.

"Yes, all, Tom! I cannot deny Mary! She saved me! I believe she is in Heaven. She could not help doing what she did. She could not help it, Tom--and she saved me! I must give you up--go away; but I can never, never deny my sister!"

Blake swung half around with the quivering girl, and looked over her downbent head at his wife. Genevieve stood almost within arm's-length of them. He met her gaze, and immediately pushed the girl out towards her.

"Listen, Belle," he said. "It is all right. Here is Jenny waiting for you. She understands."

Gowan, watching rigid and tense-lipped, with his hand clenched on the hilt of his half-drawn Colt's, was astonished to see Mrs. Blake step forward and clasp Isobel in her arms. But Ashton did not see the strange act that checked the puncher's vengeful shot. While the girl was yet clinging to Blake, he had turned and fled along the edge of the ravine, for the moment stark mad with rage and despair.

He rushed off without a cry, and the others were themselves far too surcharged with emotion to heed his going until he had disappeared around a turn in the ravine. When at last, almost spent with exertion, he staggered up a ridge to glare back at those from whom he had fled, his bloodshot eyes could perceive only three figures on the brink of the gorge. They were kneeling to look over into the ravine.

His thoughts were still in a wild whirl, but the heat of his mad rage had pa.s.sed and left him in a cold fury. He instantly comprehended that Blake had swung over the edge and was descending the rope down the almost sheer face of the ravine wall.

Now was the time! A touch of a knife-edge to the rope, and the girl would be saved. Would Gowan think of it?... Of course he would think of it. But he would not do it. He would leave the deed to be done by the man to whom he had relinquished Miss Chuckie. It was for that man to save her--to destroy the tempter and break the spell of fascination that was drawing her over the brink of a pit far deeper than any earthly canon. He, Lafayette Ashton--not Gowan--was the man. He must save her--down there in the depths, where no eye could see.

[Transcriber's Note: Map of High Mesa and Dry Mesa with place of descent and other landmarks shown appears here.]

CHAPTER XXV

THE DESCENT INTO h.e.l.l

Dangling like a spider on its thread, with a twist of the rope around one of his legs, Blake had gone down into the ravine, hand under hand, with the agility of a sailor. The tough leather of his chapareras prevented the rope from chafing the leg around which it slipped, and he managed with his free foot to fend himself off from the sharp-cornered ledges of the cliff side. In this he was less concerned for himself than for his level, which he carried in a sling, high up between his shoulders.

He was soon safe at the lower end of the rope, on the shelf beside the bundled outfit. He waved his hat to the down-peering watchers, and climbed a few yards up the ravine, to creep in under an overhanging rock. A few moments later the loosened rope came sliding down the steep descent, the last length whipping from ledge to ledge with a velocity that made it hiss through the air.

Blake was not disturbed by this proof of the c.u.mulative speed of falling bodies. He came down and coolly set about his preparations for the descent of the gorge bottom. He unlashed the bundle and divided its contents. This done, he took a vertical measurement by going out towards the canon along a horizontal shelf on the side wall of the gorge, until he could drop his surveying chain down the sheer precipice to a shelf almost a hundred feet below him.

Unaware of Ashton's mistake and furious flight, the engineer was proceeding with his work in the expectation that he would soon be joined by his a.s.sistant. He was not disappointed. As he returned along the shelf, after entering the measurement in his notebook, Ashton came bounding and scrambling down the ravine bottom at reckless speed. He fetched up on the verge of the break, purple-faced and panting. His mouth twitched nervously and there was a wild look in his dark eyes.

But Blake attributed all to the excitement and exertion of the headlong rush down the ravine.

"No need for you to have hurried so, Lafe," he said. "I suppose you had to go farther around than I thought would be necessary. But I'd rather you had kept me waiting an hour than for you to have chanced spraining an ankle."

"Yes, you need me in your business!" scoffed Ashton.

"Your employer's business," rejoined the engineer. He straightened up from the packs that he was lashing together and gazed gravely at his scowling a.s.sistant. "See here, Mr. Ashton, this is no time for you to raise a row. We shall have quite enough else to think about from now on, until we are up again out of the canon."

"I've enough to think about--and more!" muttered Ashton.

"Understand? I'm not asking anything of you for myself," said Blake.

"You are doing this survey for your employer."

"I'm here because of _her_!" retorted the younger man. "I'm here to make it certain that no harm is to come to _her_!"

Blake smiled. "Good for you! I hardly thought you were here for the fun of it. You are going to prove to us that you have the makings.

We're both working for her, Lafe. I don't mind telling you now that I am planning to do something big for her." He looked up the ravine wall, his eyes aglow with tenderness. "Belle! dear little Belle! To think that after all these years--"

"Shut up!" cried Ashton. "Stop that! stop it, and get to work! I know what you're planning to do! Don't talk to me!"

Blake stared in astonishment. "Didn't think you were so sore over that old affair. I told you I had nothing to do about your father's--"

"Don't talk to me! don't talk to me!" frantically cried Ashton. "You ruined me! Now her!"

"Lord! If you're as sore as all that!" rejoined Blake, his eyes hardening. "Look here, Mr. Ashton, we'll settle this when we get up on top again. Meantime, I shall do my work, and I shall see to it that you do yours. Understand?"

"Get busy, then! I shall do _my_ work!" snarled Ashton.

Blake pointed to one of the three bundles that he had tied together.

"There's half the grub, the tripod and the rod. I can manage the rest.

I've dropped a measurement to the foot of the first incline."