"Your stake is just down there, on a line with those alders. Colonel stumbled on it when we came through a little while ago. And, you can't see it from here, but the slide "--she paused, her lips trembling yet dimpling--"the slide has opened a great mineral vein, right above us."
He started up again, forgetting his injuries, and again sank back. "What luck," he said softly, "what luck. Strange," he added after a moment, "how I made that miscalculation."
"I think it was easy. You had broken your compass that day; you hadn't a glimpse of the sun; the whole top of this cliff must have been in cloud as it is today; the tower shut off completely. But, I'm going now." She bent to leave the flask beside him, propping it carefully to avoid loss of that remaining potion of liquor through the leak. "I may be gone a long time, but I'll hurry. I'm glad you have the prospect--to think of."
She stepped up on the edge of the rampart. "Promise you won't try to do anything," she said.
He shook his head, watching her with his smile of the eyes. "It's a safe promise. I wish it was harder to make."
She paused another moment, sitting on the edge and feeling for foothold on the root she had used in coming up; then she swung lightly off. Her eyes met his an instant across the rim. "Good-by," she said, and dipped from sight.
He raised himself a little higher, bracing his shoulder on a tilted slab, and waited for her to reappear on the bole below. She made her way quickly and surely down.
He believed she had gone for help, how uncertain and remote she had let him know, but, while he still watched that clump of alders, in which she had disappeared, she came back; and she carried a rope, presumably Colonel's lariat, coiled on her arm. Presently she put it down and began to cull out dangerous, snagged boughs from the debris at the bottom of the pitch. Where immovable rocks and stumps menaced, she heaped springy branches. And Forrest understood. She was guarding against his possible impact with the wreckage.
But at last she picked up the lariat and started back up the cedar. He saw her purpose and, also, the futility of any effort of his to stop her. "I might have guessed it," he said, and set his lips; "it was like her."