rthest support and ruptured in the middle,
held, though the portion he had crossed tilted downward at a pitch of
twenty degrees. He could see Carson, perched on his ledge, his feet
braced against the melting surface, swiftly recoiling the rope from his
shoulders to his hand.

"Wait!" he cried. "Don't move, or the whole shooting-match will come
down."

He calculated the distance with a quick glance, took the bandana from
his neck and tied it to the rope, and increased the length by a second
bandana from his pocket. The rope, manufactured from sled-lashings and
short lengths of plaited rawhide knotted together, was both light and
strong. The first cast was lucky as well as deft, and Smoke's fingers
clutched it. He evidenced a hand-over-hand intention of crawling out of
the crack. But Carson, who had refastened the rope around his own waist,
stopped him.

"Make it fast around yourself as well," he ordered.

"If I go I'll take you with me," Smoke objected.

The little man became very peremptory.

"You shut up," he ordered. "The sound of your voice is enough to start
the whole thing going."

"If I ever start going--" Smoke began.

"Shut up! You ain't going to ever start going. Now do what I say. That's
right--under the shoulders. Make it fast. Now! Start! Get a move on, but
easy as you go. I'll take in the slack. You just keep a-coming. That's
it. Easy. Easy."

Smoke was still a dozen feet away when the final collapse of the bridge
began. Without noise, but in a jerky way, it crumbled to an increasing
tilt.

"Quick!" Carson called, coiling in hand-over-hand on the slack of the
rope which Smoke's rush gave him.

When the crash came, Smoke's fingers were clawing into the hard face of
the wall of the crevasse, while his body dragged back with the falling
bridge. Carson, sitting up, feet wide apart and braced, was heaving on
the rope. This effort swung Smoke in to the side wall, but it jerked
Carson out of his niche. Like a cat, he faced about, clawing wildly for
a hold on the ice and slipping down. Beneath him, with forty feet of
taut rope between them, Smoke was clawing just as wildly; and ere the
thunder from below announced the arrival of the bridge, both men had
come to rest. Carson had achieved this first, and the several pounds of
pull he was able to put on the rope had helped bring Smoke to a stop.

Each lay in a shallow niche, but Smoke's was so shallow that, tense with
the strain of flattening and stick