He had an interest in a claim. It later turned
out worthless."
A bit of stiff climbing brought them to a boulder field back of which
rose a mountain ridge.
"We've got off the trail somehow," Elliot said. "But I don't suppose it
matters. If we keep going we're bound to come to the waterfall."
Beyond the boulder field the ridge rose sharply. Gordon looked a little
dubiously at Sheba.
"Are you a good climber?"
As she stood in the sunpour, her cheeks flushed with exercise, he could
see that her spirit courted adventure.
"I'm sure I must be," she answered with a smile adorable. "I believe I
could do the Matterhorn to-day."
Well up on the shoulder of the ridge they stopped to breathe. The
distant noise of falling water came faintly to them.
"We're too far to the left--must have followed the wrong spur," Elliot
explained. "Probably we can cut across the face of the mountain."
Presently they came to an impasse. The gulch between the two spurs
terminated in a rock wall that fell almost sheer for two hundred feet.
The color in the cheeks beneath the eager eyes of the girl was warm.
"Let's try it," she begged.
The young man had noticed that she was as sure-footed as a mountain goat
and that she could stand on the edge of a precipice without dizziness.
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