They found places where he had hunted for fuel, and firing signals
regularly they reached the spot where he had camped the night before,
and saw the ashes of his fire. He was headed south; not because there
was more hope that way--there was less--but as if he must keep moving,
and that were easiest. A quarter of a mile below where he had spent
the night they caught sight of a man sitting on a fallen tree resting
his leg. The next moment three men were in a tumbling race across the
slope, and Blood, weakly hurrahing, fainted in Glover's arms.
His story was short. He reminded his rescuers of the little spring on
the hill at the point where the wreck had occurred. The ice that
always spread across the track and over the edge of the gulch had been
chopped out by the shovellers the afternoon before, but water trickling
from the rock had laid a fresh trap for unwary feet during the night.
In jumping from the gangway at the moment of the wreck Blood's heels
had landed on smooth ice and he had tumbled and slid six hundred feet.
Recovering consciousness at the bottom of a washout he found the calf
of one leg ripped a little, as he put it. The loss of one side of his
mustache, swept away in the slide, and leaving on his face a peculiarly
forlorn expression, he did not take account of--declaring on the whole,
as he smiled into the swimming eyes around him, that with the exception
of tobacco he was doing very well.
They got him in front of a big fire, plied him with food and
stimulants, and Glover, from a surgical packet, bandaged anew the wound
in his leg. Then came the question of retreat.
They discussed two plans. The first to retrace their steps entirely;
the second, to go back to where the gap could be attempted and the
western track gained below the hill. Each meant long and severe
climbing, each presented its particular difficulties, and three men of
the four felt that if the torn artery opened once more their victory
would be barren--that Blood needed surgical aid promptly if at all.
But Dancing had a third plan.
It was while they still consulted at this point that their fire was
seen on Pilot Hill and reported to Bucks at the Brock car, from which
the rapidly moving party had been seen only at long intervals during
the morning.
The fire was the looked-for signal that the superintendent had been
reached, and the word went from group to group of men up the hill.
Through the strong glass that Glover had left with her, Gertrude could
see the smoke, and the storming signals of the panting engines above
her made sweeter music after she caught with her eye the faint column
in the distant gap. Even her father, feeling still something like a
conscript, brightened up at the general rejoicing. He had produced his
own glass and let Gertrude with eager prompting help him to find the
smoke. The moment the position of Glover's party was made definite,
Bucks ordered the car run down the Hog's Back to a point so much closer
that across the broad cañon, flanking Pilot on the south, they could
make out with their glasses the figures of the three men and, when they
began to move, the smaller figure of Morris Blood.