They went on, Charmian’s face white, her upper teeth grasping her lower lip. She felt faint and vertiginous. Her knees shook. But she marched on bravely, hugging the upstanding wall on her left. They came to a portion of the descent where the trail was little more than eighteen inches in width. Above them an absolutely perpendicular wall upreared itself. Below them yawned the abyss, at its very feet the green river, which swung in to the wall in a great bend from the meadows. To follow that eighteen-inch shelf would be like walking along the eaves trough of a house. Charmian came to a halt. “Oh, I can’t! I can’t!” she moaned piteously. “I can’t go on another step, Doctor! Don’t ask me to! I’m--oh, I’m ill! I’m--I’m--” His long arms closed about her, and she dropped her head on his breast, sobbing nervously, shaking like an aspen. “There-there-there!” he soothed. “Don’t worry. I’ll fix you up. Lie down, now, and look up. That’ll give you courage and relieve you. I’ll fix you up so you can walk a tight rope and laugh.” He eased her to the ground and made her lie on her back. Her pretty face was dirty, and the tears had wriggled down her cheeks and washed elongated hieroglyphics in the grime. She gulped and licked her lips and looked up bravely into the heavens. “There! There!” Shonto had removed his pack and was fumbling within for his medicine case. “Fix you up in a minute. Then you’ll feel like climbing telegraph poles.” He was bending over her now. He took hold of one arm and pushed up the sleeve. She felt him squeezing the flesh. Then came a little stab of pain, and she rolled her eyes to see the glitter of a hypodermic syringe in his strong fingers. “Wh-what did you do to me?” “Hush! Never mind. Lie still a little and you’ll feel dandy. Just a shot of cocaine. Feel it yet?” “Ye-yes, I believe I do. I seem to be floating--floating; I’m getting light as a feather. My stars! I was never so happy in my life! I want to get up.” “Of course you do,” chuckled Shonto. “Not only that, but you want to tell the world, when you get up, that you’re equal to about anything, don’t you?” “Yes, I want to flap my wings and crow, even if I am a hen. I don’t care for anything. I’m a whizgimp. Mary Temple says that a whizgimp is a person who is happy, even though he knows one more hot day will send him to the bug house.” She sat up suddenly and unexpectedly, turned to her knees, and in springing lightly to her feet with a glad little laugh, her foot struck the medicine case. With a muttered oath the doctor sprawled in the trail and grasped at it. His frantic fingers touched it, but the contact served only to push it over the edge, and it went rattling and bounding down the cliff into the green waters of the river. “Come on!” Charmian giggled. “Let it go! What’s the difference! Lead out--I’m crazy to get down into the Valley of Arcana! And I can run along that narrow shelf and laugh while I’m about it!” CHAPTER XVIII