Harry's foot came down upon a boulder which turned under his weight. He regained his balance with a start, but the stone toppled over. He listened. There were scores of heart-beats before it splashed in the water below.
“Not so much as a twig between here and eternity,” he said to himself, with a shudder. Then aloud: “Can't we stay here, some place, and not go along there to-night?”
The roar of the water drowned his voice before it reached Fortner's ears, and Harry, obeying the instinct to accept leadership, followed the mountaineer tremblingly.
In a little while he felt--more than saw--Fortner stop, adjust his feet, and make a long stride forward with one of them. Glen collected himself for the same effort. He had need of all of his resolution, for the many narrow escapes which he had made from slipping into the hungry torrent, had shaken every nerve.
“I'm over,” called out Fortner. “Ye try hit now.”
Harry balanced his gun so as to embarrass him the least, and carefully felt with his left foot for the edge of the chasm. The catamount announced his renewed presence by a vindictive scream. The clouds parted just enough to let through a rift of gray light, but it fell not upon the brink of the black gap in the path. It showed for an instant the whirlpool, with fragments of tree trunks, of ghastly likeness to drowned human bodies, eddying dizzily around.
“Come on,” called out Fortner, impatiently.
Harry stepped out desperately. For a mental eternity he hung in air. His hands relaxed and his gun dropped with a crash and a splash. Then his foot touched the other side with nervous doubtfulness. It slipped, and he felt himself falling--falling into all that he feared. Fortner grasped his collar with a strong hand, and dragged him up against the rocky wall of the path.
“Thar, yer all right,” he said, panting with the exertion, “but hit wuz a mouty loud call for ye. Gabriel's ho'n couldn't've made a much mo' powerful one.”
“I've lost my gun,” said Harry, regretfully, as soon as he could compose himself.
“Cuss-an'-burn the blasted ole smooth-bore,” said Fortner, contemptuously. “Don't waste no tear on that ole kick-out-behind. We'll go 'long 'tween Wildcat an' the Ford, an' pick up a wagon-load uv ez good shooters ez thet clumsy chunk o' pot-metal wuz. Shake yourself together. We've on'y got a mile or so ter go now.”