h slight uneven surfaces as he could feel,
Bucks moved to the right after Dancing, who gripped his extended right
hand and led him foot by foot down the perilous way. Not a word was
spoken, hardly a breath drawn, as the lineman felt for his slippery
foothold with the deftness of a gorilla, and, pressing Bucks's hand as
the signal to take a follow step, he made a slow but steady descent.

The roar of the river already sounded in Bucks's ears like a cataract,
but the shock of extreme danger had numbed his apprehension. Chips of
the sharp granite cut his feet like knives, and he knew that the
sticky feeling upon his bare soles was blood oozing through the broken
skin. He had already given up expectation of ever leaving the gorge
alive and merely responded to his companion's will. The one thought
that came to his mind was curiosity as to what Dancing ever expected
to do if they reached the bottom without accident.

Suddenly above the roar of the river he heard the muffled crack of
fire-arms coming as if out of another world. He wondered whether they
themselves were already being fired at, but experienced nothing more
than curiosity in the thought. Only the pressure of the big hand that
gripped his own impressed itself powerfully upon his consciousness,
and at each squeeze he put his foot forward mechanically, intent on a
dull resolve to obey orders.

He presently felt a new signal from the long fingers that wound around
his own. He tried to answer by stepping, but Dancing whose face was
turned away, restrained him. Then it flashed on Bucks that the lineman
was signalling Morse to him, and that the dot-and-dash squeezes meant:
"Half-way down. Half-way down."

Bucks answered with one word: "Hurrah!" But he squeezed it along the
nerves and muscles like lightning.

He could hear the labored breathing of his companion as he strained at
intervals every particle of his strength to reach a new footing of
safety. Every vine and scrubby bush down the cliff wall was tested for
its strength and root, and Dancing held Bucks's hand so that he could
instantly release it if he himself should plunge to death.

Bucks had already been told that if this happened he must hang as long
as he could without moving and if he could hold on till daylight he
would be rescued by railroad men. All this was going through his head
when, responding to a signal to step down, and, unable to catch some
word that Dancing whispered, he stretched his leg so