He raised his head on his elbow and called across to her: "Say, Linda, how often will you write to me?"Linda answered promptly: "Every Saturday night. Saturday is our day. I'll tell you what has happened all the week. I'll tell you specially what a darned unprofitable day Saturday is when you're three thousand miles away."Bending over the canyon fireplace, her face red with heat and exertion, Katherine O'Donovan caught up her poker and beat up the fire until the ashes flew.
"Easy, Katy, easy," cautioned Linda. "We may want to bury those coals and resurrect them to warm up what is left for supper.""We'll do no such thing," said Katy promptly. "What remains goes to feed the fish. Next time it's hungry ye are, we're goin' to hit it straight to Lilac Valley and fill ourselves with God's own bread and beefsteak and paraties. Don't ye think we're goin' to be atin' these haythen messes twice in one day."To herself she was saying: "The sooner I get you home to Pater Morrison, missy, the better I'll be satisfied."Once she stood erect, her hands at her belt, her elbows widespread, and with narrowed eyes watched the youngsters. Her lips were closed so tightly they wrinkled curiously as she turned back to the fireplace.
"Nayther one of them fool kids has come to yet," she said to herself, "and a mighty good thing it is that they haven't."Linda was looking speculatively at Donald as he lay stretched on the Indian blanket at the base of the cliff. And then, because she was for ever busy with Nature, her eyes strayed above him up the side of the cliff, noting the vegetation, the scarred rocks, the sheer beauty of the canyon wall until they reached the top.
Then, for no reason at all, she sat looking steadily at a huge boulder overhanging the edge of the cliff, and she was wondering how many ages it had hung there and how many more it would hang, poised almost in air, when a tiny pebble at its base loosened and came rattling and bounding down the canyon face. Every nerve in Linda tensed. She opened her mouth, but not a sound came. For a breathless second she was paralyzed. Then she shrieked wildly:
"Donald, Donald, roll under the ledge! Quick, quick!"She turned to Katy.
"Back, Katy, back!" she screamed. "That boulder is loose; it's coming down!"For months Donald Whiting had obeyed Linda implicitly and instantly. He had moved with almost invisible speed at her warning many times before. Sometimes it had been a venomous snake, sometimes a yucca bayonet, sometimes poison vines, again unsafe footing--in each case instant obedience had been the rule.
He did hot "question why" at her warning; he instantly did as he was told. He, too, had noticed the falling pebble. With all the agility of which he was capable he rolled under the narrow projecting ledge above him. Katherine O'Donovan was a good soldier also. She whirled and ran to the roadway. She had barely reached it when, with a grinding crash, down came the huge boulder, carrying bushes, smaller rocks, sand, and debris with it. On account of its weight it fell straight, struck heavily, and buried itself in the earth exactly on the spot upon which Donald had been lying. Linda raised terrified eyes to the top of the wall. For one instant a dark object peered over it and then drew back. Without thought for herself Linda rushed to the boulder, and kneeling, tried to see back of it.
"Donald!" she cried, "Donald, are you all right?""Guess I am, unless it hit one foot pretty hard. Feels fast.""Can you get out?" she cried, beginning to tear with her hands at the stone and the bushes where she thought his head would be.
"I'm fast; but I'm all right," he panted. "Why the devil did that thing hang there for ages, and then come down on me today?""Yes, why did it?" gasped Linda. "Donald, I must leave you a minute. I've got to know if I saw a head peer over just as that stone came down.""Be careful what you do!" he cried after her.
Linda sprang to her feet and rushed to the car. She caught out the field classes and threw the strap over her head as she raced to the far side of the fireplace where the walls were not so sheer. Katherine O'Donovan promptly seized the axe, caught its carrying strap lying beside it, thrust the handle through, swung it over her own head, dropped it between her shoulders, and ripping off her dress skirt she started up the cliff after Linda.
Linda was climbing so swiftly and so absorbedly that she reached the top before she heard a sound behind her. Then she turned with a white face, and her mouth dropped open as she saw Katy three fourths of the way up the cliff. For one second she was again stiff with terror, then, feeling she could do nothing, she stepped back out of sight and waited a second until Katy's red head and redder face appeared over the edge. Realizing that her authority was of no avail, that Katy would follow her no matter where she went or what she did, and with no time to argue, Linda simply called to her encouragingly: "Follow where I go; take your time; hang tight, old dear, it's dangerous!"She started around the side of the mountain, heading almoststraight upward, traveling as swiftly and as noiselessly as possible. Over big boulders, on precarious footing, clinging to bushes, they made their way until they reached a place that seemed to be sheer above them; certainly it was for hundreds of feet below On a point of rock screened by overhanging bushes Linda paused until Katy overtook her.
"We are about stalled," she panted. "Find a good footing and stay where you are. I'm going to climb out on these bushes and see if I can get a view of the mountain side."Advancing a few yards, Linda braced herself, drew around her glasses, and began searching the side of the mountain opposite her and below as far as she could range with the glasses. At last she gave up.
