Out Of The Depths Part 53

"That's enough," said the sheriff. "I've got to own up to being forty.

But I'm leading this here posse, and I'll eat my hat if I can't outclimb anything on two legs in this county. String out your ropes, boys, and pa.s.s over all them picket-pins. We'll need a purchase now and again, I figure, hauling up Mr. Blake. Hustle! Here's the sun clean up."

Under the brusquely jovial directions of their leader, the lucky nine divested themselves of spurs and cartridge belts, tied themselves to the line at intervals of several feet, and promptly started down the dizzy ledges. The others helped them during the first fifty yards of descent with the line that Isobel had drawn up after it had been cast loose by Ashton. They then gathered along the brink, enviously watching the descent of their companions into the shadowy abyss.

Genevieve came to where Isobel and her father crouched beside the others. "Thomas will not let me put him down, Belle," she said. "I see you left the gla.s.ses beside the rock. If Lafayette has reached the bottom safely--"

"If--safely!" echoed Isobel. "Daddy, you look--quick, please!"

Knowles hastened to skirt along the brink to where the little field gla.s.ses lay at the near side of the split rock. The two followed him, Genevieve smiling with pleasant antic.i.p.ation, Isobel trembling with doubt and dread. The cowman stretched out on the rim shelf and peered over.

"Um-m-m," he muttered. "Can't see anything down there. Too dark yet."

"Look straight below you," said Genevieve.

"Hey?--Uh! By--James! Well, if that ain't a picture now! These sure are mighty fine little gla.s.ses, ma'am. I can see 'em plain as day."

"Them?--you say 'them,' Daddy?" cried Isobel.

"Sure. Come and look for yourself. Guess Lafe is fixing Mr. Blake's leg.--Which reminds me, honey, that before we left the ranch, Mrs.

Blake had me send for that lunger sawbones that's come to live at Stockchute. He'll be here, I figure, before or soon after the boys get Mr. Blake up into G.o.d's suns.h.i.+ne."

"Brother Tom, Daddy--you mean my Brother Tom!" joyfully corrected the girl as she took the gla.s.ses.

"Well, you've got to give me time to chew on it, honey. It's come too sudden for me to take it all in." He stood up and gazed gravely at the smiling mother and her comforted baby. "Hum-m-m. Then that yearling is my Chuckie's own blood nephew. Well, ma'am, what do _you_ think of it, if I may ask?"

"Can't you make it 'Jenny,' Uncle Wes?" asked Genevieve.

He stared at her blankly. "But I didn't adopt him, ma'am--only her."

"He is the brother of your dear daughter, and I am his wife. Come now," she coaxed, "you must admit that brings me near enough to call you 'Uncle Wes.'"

"You've got me, ma'am--Jenny. I give in, I throw up the fight. That irrigation project now--Chuckie's brother can have anything of mine he asks for. Only there's one thing--you've got to make that yearling say 'Granddad' when he talks to me."

"O-oh!" cooed Genevieve. "To think you feel that way towards him! Of course he shall say it. And I--Will you not allow me to make it 'Daddy'?"

He could not resist her enticingly upturned lips. He brushed down his bristly mustache, and bent over awkwardly, to kiss his new daughter.

"Thought you were one of those super-high-toned ladies, m'm--Jenny,"

he remarked.

The cultured child of millions smiled up at him reproachfully. "What!

after I have been with you so long, Daddy? But it's true there was a time--before Tom taught me that men cannot be judged by mere polish and veneer, or the lack of polish and veneer."

Isobel, all her doubts and fears allayed, had risen from the precipice's edge in time to hear Genevieve's reply. She added eagerly: "Nor should men be judged by what they have been if they have become something else--if they have climbed up--up out of the depths!"

"Belle! dear Sister Belle! Then he has proved it to you? Oh, I am so glad for you! He has proved to you that he has climbed--to the heights."

"To the very heights! I must tell Daddy. Give me Thomas. See, he is fast asleep, the poor abused little darling! Go and watch them, and our climbers. They are going down like a string of mountain sheep."

Genevieve placed the baby in his aunt's outstretched arms and went to look into the abyss through the field gla.s.ses. Isobel drew her father away, out of earshot of the down-peering group of men. She stopped behind the tent, which Gowan had pitched part way up the slope of the ridge.

"You want to talk with me about Lafe, honey?" surmised Knowles, as the girl started to speak and hesitated.

Her cheeks flamed scarlet, but she raised her shyly lowered eyes and looked up at him with a clear, direct gaze. "Yes, Daddy. He--he loves me, and I--love him."

"That so?" said Knowles. His eyes contracted. It was his only betrayal of the wrench she had given the tender heart within his tough exterior. "Well, I figured it was bound to come some day. I've been lucky not to lose you any time the last four years."

"You--you do not say anything about him, Daddy."

"Haven't you cut him out of the herd?" he dryly replied. "That's enough for me, long as I know he's your choice and is square."

"He has nothing; he is very poor."

"He's got the will to work. He'll get there, with you pus.h.i.+ng on the reins. That's how I size him up."

"But, Daddy, he told me he had been bad, very bad."

Knowles searched the girl's face, with a sudden up-leaping of concern--that vanished as quickly before what he saw in her clear eyes.

"Might have expected it of you, honey. You stand by him. You've got sense enough to know what it means when a man thinks enough of a girl to tell her the wrong things he has done. I was wild, too, when I was a youngster. There was a girl I thought enough of to tell. She wasn't your kind, honey. It came near sending me to the devil for good. You know better. No girl ought to be fool enough to hitch up with a man to reform him. But if he has already taken a brace and straightened the kinks out of himself, that's different."

"He has come up, Daddy--out of the depths."

Knowles only half caught her meaning. "Sure he climbed up. That proves he has the grit and the nerve. He had proved that even better, going down at the other place. Put any man down there, and he'd make a try to get out. No, the real test was his going back down again. He might have come up just for himself. But going down again--that's the proof of what's in him; that's what proves he's white!"

"Dear Daddy!... But I'm afraid. He thinks he has been too bad ever to--to marry me. I'm so afraid he'll go away and leave me!"

The cowman straightened up, his eyes glinting with righteous indignation.

"What! Go 'way and leave you?--when you want him to stay? By--James!

He's going to stay! Don't you worry, honey. He's going to stay, if I have to rope and hogtie him for you!"

The girl stared into the frowning face of her father. There was no twinkle in the corner of his eyes. He was absolutely serious. For the first time in over two days her dimples flashed. Her eyes sparkled with merriment. Her lips parted. But she checked the gay laugh before it could burst out.

"Oh!" she reproached herself. "How could I? And they still down there--and Tom suffering!"

"Tom?" repeated Knowles. "Thomas Blake--your brother! That's why you got me started reading all those reports and engineering journals.

You guessed it."

"It did not seem possible. Yet I could not help hoping."

"Things do happen our way--sometimes," qualified Knowles. "Mrs.

Blake--Jenny--says Lafe brought up word that the project can be put through. I meant to fight. But now--he is your brother, and he has done something no man ever before thought could be done--he has surveyed Deep Canon. He has me beat. I've told Mrs.--Jenny straight out."

"I know he will do what is right by you, dear, dear Daddy."

"He's your brother, honey. That settles it."