Patricia crawled down to where she could look in through the opening. She could not see much of anything; just the rough wall of the crosscut where the light struck, and beyond that gloom that deepened to the darkness of night. Gary, lying directly beneath her, she could not see at all. Yet she called him again and again. Wistfully, endearingly, as women call frantically after the new-fled souls of their dearest. She was still calling heart-brokenly upon Gary when Monty returned, puffing up the slope under a capacity load of what he thought might be needed. Slung upon his back, like a fantastic cross, was an old, rusted pick, the handle cracked and weather-checked and well-nigh useless. “Joe’s coming along behind with a shovel,” Monty informed her, when he could summon sufficient breath for speaking. “Don’t yuh-all take on thataway, Miss Connolly. Gary, he’s plumb fainted for joy and weakness, I reckon. But he’s in the shade where it’s cool, and he’ll come to himself in a little bit. I reckon we better have the malted milk beat up and ready to hand in. I don’t reckon Gary’ll feel much like waitin’ for meals--when he wakes up.” Once more Patricia steadied herself by sheer will power, so that she might do calmly and efficiently the things that must be done. For an hour longer she did full penance for all her sins; sitting there on the bowlder with a cup of malted milk in her hands, waiting for Gary to regain consciousness, and fighting a terrible fear that he was dead--that they had come too late. Joe arrived with an old shovel that was absolutely useless for their purpose. Such rocks as they could lift were quicker thrown out of the half-filled shaft with their hands, using the pick now and then to pry loose rocks that were wedged together. As for the bowlder that blocked the opening to the crosscut, they needed dynamite for that and would not have dared to use it if they had it; not with Gary prisoned in the small space behind it. Monty worked the small rocks away from the bowlder first and studied the problem worriedly. A malapi bowlder, nearly the height of a man, fitted into the bottom of a ten-foot incline shaft with granite walls, is a matter difficult to handle without giant powder. “Joe, yuh-all will have to beat it and get help. Three or four men with strong backs we’ve got to have, and block and tackle and chain--and some pinch bars. Yuh-all may have to go clear in to Vegas, I reckon--but git the help!” Joe goggled wide-eyed at the narrow opening, stared curiously at Patricia, wiping tears from her cheeks with one hand and holding carefully the cup of malted milk in the other. “Gosh! Kin he last that long in there?” he blurted, and was propelled several feet down the bluff by Monty’s hand fixed viselike on the back of his neck.