gray
ponderous wall of cliff before the old strange interest in the Yaqui
seized him again. It recalled the tie that existed between them, a tie
almost as close as blood. Then he was eager and curious to see how the
Indian would conquer those seemingly insurmountable steps of stone.

Yaqui left the gulch and clambered up over a jumble of weathered slides
and traced a slow course along the base of the giant wall. He looked up
and seemed to select a point for ascent. It was the last place in that
mountainside where Gale would have thought climbing possible. Before
him the wall rose, leaning over him, shutting out the light, a dark
mighty mountain mass. Innumerable cracks and crevices and caves
roughened the bulging sides of dark rock.

Yaqui tied one end of his lasso to the short, stout stick and,
carefully disentangling the coils, he whirled the stick round and round
and threw it almost over the first rim of the shelf, perhaps thirty
feet up. The stick did not lodge. Yaqui tried again. This time it
caught in a crack. He pulled hard. Then, holding to the lasso, he
walked up the steep slant, hand over hand on the rope. When he reached
the shelf he motioned for Gale to follow. Gale found that method of
scaling a wall both quick and easy. Yaqui pulled up the lasso, and
threw the stick aloft into another crack. He climbed to another shelf,
and Gale followed him. The third effort brought them to a more rugged
bench a hundred feet above the slides. The Yaqui worked round to the
left, and turned into a dark fissure. Gale kept close to his heels.
They came out presently into lighter space, yet one that restricted any
extended view. Broken sections of cliff were on all sides.

Here the ascent became toil. Gale could distance Yaqui going downhill;
on the climb, however, he was hard put to it to keep the Indian in
sight. It was not a question of strength or lightness of foot. These
Gale had beyond the share of most men. It was a matter of lung power,
and the Yaqui's life had been spent scaling the desert heights.
Moreover, the climbing was infinitely slow, tedious, dangerous. On the
way up several times Gale imagined he heard a dull roar of falling
water. The sound seemed to be under him, over him to this side and to
that. When he was certain he could locate the direction from which it
came then he heard it no more until he had gone on. Gradually he
forgot it in the physical sensations of the climb. He burned