Page:Clarence Mulford - Man from Bar-20.djvu/253

 At Bay shouted insults at the man on the butte; and after a few minutes they saw Holbrook, bent double, dart swiftly across a little open space, disappear into the brush and emerge into sight again, vague and shadowy, near the base of the wall a dozen yards below the end of the trail. He crept slowly over a patch of detritus which sloped up to the wall, and began his climb, which was not as easy a task as he had believed.

The wall, eroded where rotting stone had crumbled away in layers, was a series of curving bulges, each capped by and ending in an out-thrust ledge. He forsook his rifle on the second ledge and went slowly, doggedly upward, but despite all his care to make no noise, he dislodged pebbles and chunks of rotten stone and shale which lay thick upon the rocky shelves. When half way up he paused to search out hand and foot holds and became suddenly enraged at the amount of time he was consuming; and he realized, uneasily, that he had heard no more crashing rocks. The knowledge sent caution to the winds and drove him at top speed, and it also robbed him of some of the jaunty assurance which had urged him to his task. Fear of the ridicule and the jeers of his sarcastic friends now became a more compelling motive than the hope of success; and he writhed and stretched, twisted, clawed, and scrambled upward with an angry, savage determination which he would have characterized as "bull-headed" in anyone 241