"Tom said that he rode all along the cañon for miles. You say it may be possible to climb up at that place. He must have seen it, and he has remembered it."
"I know that if it is possible for anyone to climb the wall, Tom will climb it--and he will bring up Lafayette with him."
"Dear Genevieve! You are so strong! so full of hope!"
"Not hope, dear. It is trust. I know Tom better than you. That is all."
"Another flash!" cried Isobel. "So soon, yet all that long way from the last! They are traveling far faster!"
"Yes, they have finished with the levels," divined Genevieve. "We must hasten."
Isobel called the news to the silent puncher, and all moved along to overtake the hurrying fugitives below. Though both parties went so much faster, Blake's frequent shots kept the anxious watchers above in closer touch than at any time before.
At last they came to that Cyclopean ladder of precipices, rising one above the other in narrow steps, and all inclined at a giddy pitch far steeper than any house roof. Yet for a long way down them the field glasses showed their surfaces wrinkled with shelves and projecting ledges and creased with faults and crevices.
The party went past this semi-break in the sheer wall, and halted on the out-jutting point of the rim where the luckless flock of sheep had been driven over to destruction. No reference was made to that ruthless slaughter of innocents. Gowan calmly set about preparing a camp. The ladies lay down to watch in the shade of a frost-cracked rock on the verge of the wall.
Already the time had come and gone for the regular signal of the revolver shot. The watchers began to grow apprehensive. Still their straining eyes saw no flash in the depths. A half hour passed. Their apprehension deepened to dread. An hour--they were white with terror.
Suddenly a tiny red spot appeared--not a flash that came and went like lightning, but a flame that remained and grew larger.
"A fire!" cried Isobel. "They have halted and built a fire."
Genevieve brought the flag and thrust it out over the edge. The inner end of the pole she wedged in a crevice of the split rock.
"They have stopped to rest," she said. "It may be that Lafayette is worn out. But soon I trust they will be coming up."