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"Drop over the chain at that point," curtly ordered the engineer. "Think you can climb back up this slope without the rope?" "Yes," answered Ashton, still more curtly. Blake lifted the line and sent up it a wave that carried to the upper end and flipped the loop from the spike-head.
Reaching back, Ashton jerked the rope from the spike-head, to cast it down on the engineer. A glimpse of the flashing water in the cañon bottom gave momentary check to his vengeful impulse. If only he had a drink of that cool water! He was parched; his lips were cracking; in his mouth was the taste of dust.
Blake cut off the line at the foot of the cliff and left it dangling. They would require it for their ascent. Another Titan step took fifty feet more of the rope. There followed a series of steep pitches, which they descended like the first, unlooping the rope from spike-head after spike-head.
Rage, no less than the laborious exertion of the descent, had dried up his body with its feverish fire. Almost maddened with the torment of his craving, he looped the rope on the spike-head with reckless haste and slid down over the edge of the cliff. As the line tautened with his weight it gave several inches, but he was too nearly frantic to heed.
Scattered among them haphazard, in one instance through a lithographic print, were round holes as large as a spike-head, through which, by closely applying the eye, one could view the world without.
One of the toes of the level tripod under the taut loop would easily pry the rope off the spike-head. He turned his pack around to get at the tripod and paused to look upwards at the three tiny faces peering down over the brink of the cliff. He slung the pack over his shoulder and grasped the rope to follow his leader, who had come to the narrow shelf from which another measurement must be taken.
But those six sticks of dynamite would simplify the complex situation without difficulty. He did not hurry the horse. He merely walked in front holding the bridle slackly. The horse followed him as good as gold and picked up his feet at nearly every spike. Once or twice a hind hoof grazed a spike-head with a rasping sound that sent Racey's heart bouncing up into his throat.
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