lay in that direction, beat the bushes that
fringed the half-opened street, confident that the fugitives were in
hiding among them.

For an ordinary man, indeed, there was no escape toward the river. A
wall of rock fell a hundred feet to the water's edge. The crowd,
growing every moment as the word passed that Dancing was whipped,
left the hunted man and his companion little time for decision.
Dancing, in truth, needed but little. His purpose was fixed the
instant he saw himself cut off from every other chance. He halted only
on the brink of the precipice itself. Catching Bucks's arm, he told
him hurriedly what they must do and cautioned him. "It's the last
chance, sonny," he murmured, as his iron fingers gripped the boy's
arm. "We can make it--if you do exactly as I tell you."

The gathering cries closed in behind them while they were taking off
their shoes. Creeping on his hands and knees along the brow of the
cliff, Dancing felt out his location with his fingers. And with that
sixth sense of instinct which rises to a faculty when dangers thicken
about a resolute man, the lineman found what he sought.

He caught at the root of a rock-bound cedar, swung himself over the
cliff, and called to Bucks to follow. Bucks acted wholly on faith. The
blackness below was impenetrable, and perhaps better so, since he
could not see what he was undertaking. Only the roar of the river
came up from the depths. It sounded a little ominous as Bucks,
grasping the cedar root, swung over and after an agonizing instant
felt a support for his feet. He stood on a ledge of rock so narrow
that it gave only a footing even in daylight, but Bucks was called on
to descend it in the middle of the night.

For any man to have attempted the feat seemed to him, the next
morning, sheer insanity. Dancing, however, knew the treacherous face
of the river wall. To his gigantic size and strength he united the
sureness of a cat in climbing up or down a mountain arete. Often he
had crept with a telegraph wire, unaided, where his best men hung back
even in harness. There was, in fact, no time now for halting. The
rioters, eager on the trail, were calling for torches, and, if
discovered before they reached the water, the lives of the two men
would be snuffed out by dropping rocks on their heads.

Flattening himself as he had been bidden to do and with his cheek laid
to the face of the sheer rock, clasping from time to time with his
outstretched left hand suc