Venters mounted
it and his dogs walked beside him. Once upon the stone he slowed
to snail pace, straining his sight to avoid the pockets and
holes. Foot by foot he went up. The weird cedars, like great
demons and witches chained to the rock and writhing in silent
anguish, loomed up with wide and twisting naked arms. Venters
crossed this belt of cedars, skirted the upper border, and
recognized the tree he had marked, even before he saw his waving
scarf.
Here he knelt and deposited the girl gently, feet first and
slowly laid her out full length. What he feared was to reopen one
of her wounds. If he gave her a violent jar, or slipped and fell!
But the supreme confidence so strangely felt that night admitted
no such blunders.
The slope before him seemed to swell into obscurity to lose its
definite outline in a misty, opaque cloud that shaded into the
over-shadowing wall. He scanned the rim where the serrated points
speared the sky, and he found the zigzag crack. It was dim, only
a shade lighter than the dark ramparts, but he distinguished it,
and that served.
Lifting the girl, he stepped upward, closely attending to the
nature of the path under his feet. After a few steps he stopped
to mark his line with the crack in the rim. The dogs clung closer
to him. While chasing the rabbit this slope had appeared
interminable to him; now, burdened as he was, he did not think of
length or height or toil.
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