"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." She looked through her glasses. The fire was burning its brightest. She discerned the prostrate figure beside the ledge. She watched it fixedly. Soon another figure appeared in the circle of firelight. It bent over the first, doing something with pieces of stick. "Look," whispered Genevieve, handing the glasses to her companion, "Tom is hurt. Lafayette is binding his leg. It is broken or badly strained.--Oh! will your father never come?" "Tom hurt? It can't be--no, no!" protested Isobel. But she too looked and saw. After a time she added breathlessly: "It can't be so bad! Lafe is helping him to rise.... They are starting this way--to the foot of the wall! They will be climbing up!" "But if his leg is injured!" differed Genevieve. Again they waited. Presently the fire scattered, and a streak of flame traveled across the canyon to a point beneath them. Soon the red spot of a new fire glowed in the shadows so directly under them that a pebble dropped from their fingers must have grazed down the precipices and fallen into the flames. After several minutes of alternate peering through the glasses, Genevieve handed them back to Isobel for the third time, and rose to go to her baby. "It is Tom alone," she said, divining the truth. "Lafayette has helped him to the best place they could find, and now he is coming up to us for help." When she had fed the baby and soothed him to sleep, she laid out bandages and salve, set a full coffeepot on the fire started by Gowan, and examined the cream and eggs brought back by the puncher on his second night trip to the ranch. Nearly an hour had passed when Isobel called in joyous excitement: "I see him! I see him! Down there where the sunlight slants on the rocks. Oh! how bravely! how swiftly he climbs!" Genevieve went to take the glasses and look. Several moments were lost before she could locate the tiny figure creeping up that stairway of the giants. But, once she had fixed the glasses upon him, she could see him clearly. Isobel had well expressed it when she said that he was climbing swiftly and bravely. Running along shelves, clambering ledges, following up the crevices that offered the best foothold, the tattered climber fought his dizzy way upwards, upwards, ever upwards!