Blake was already struggling up. Ashton strained to help him rise erect on his sound leg. Braced and half lifted by the younger man, the engineer hobbled and hopped along the barrier crest and up its sloping side. His trained eye picked out a great weather-seasoned pine log lying directly beneath the outermost point of the canyon rim. An object dropped over where the flag still flecked against the indigo sky, would have fallen straight down to the log, unless deflected by the prong of a ledge that jutted out twelve hundred feet from the top. "Here," panted Blake, regardless of the great pile of skeletons heaped on the far end of the log. "This place--right below them! Go back--bring fire and rope." Ashton ran back to fetch the rope and a dozen blazing sticks. Driftwood was strewn all around. In a minute he had a fire started against the butt end of the log. He began to gather a pile of fuel. But Blake checked him with a cheerful--"That's enough, old man. I can manage now. Take the rope, and go." When Ashton had coiled the rope over his shoulder and under the opposite arm, he came and stood before his prostrate companion. His face was scarlet with shame. "I have been a fool--and worse," he said. "I doubted her. I am utterly unfit to live. If I were alone down here, I would stay and rot. But you are her brother. If it is possible to get up there, I am going up." "You are going up!" encouraged Blake. "You will make it. Give my love to them. Tell them I'm doing fine." He held out his hand. "No," said Ashton. "I'd give anything if I could grip hands with you. But I cannot. You are her brother. I am unfit to touch your hand." He turned and ran up the precipice-foot to the first steep ascent of the steeple-sloped break in the wall of the abyss. CHAPTER XXIX THE CLIMBER A day of anxiety, only partly relieved by those tiny flashes of light so far, far down in the awful depths; then the long night of ceaseless watching. Neither Genevieve nor Isobel had been able to sleep during those hours when no flash signaled up to them from the abysmal darkness. Then at last, a full hour after dawn on the mesa top, the down-peering wife had caught the flash that told of the renewal of the exploration. As throughout the previous day, Gowan brought the ladies food and whatever else they needed. Only the needs of the baby had power to draw its mother away from the canyon edge. Isobel moved always along the giddy verge wherever she could cling to it, following the unseen workers in the depths. On his first trip to the ranch, the puncher had brought Genevieve's field glasses--an absurdly small instrument of remarkable power. Three times the first day and twice the second morning she and Isobel had the joy of seeing their loved ones creeping along the abyss bottom at places where the sun pierced down through the gloom. They missed other chances because the canyon edge was not everywhere so easily approachable.