THE WINDOW OF THE SPHINX
feet. Upon the right it scarcely reached six above the river basin; but he saw that to descend the side of the watershed would be more difficult now than to descend its face. He felt as, when a child, he had scrambled to the end of a tree limb and had to take a choice of scrambling all the way back or dropping to the ground. He had always preferred to drop. He was preparing to do that now. It meant leaving the half-breed and the horses on the head of the cliff and voyaging across the stream and up to the window of the Sphinx alone. He was rather glad of that. The long rope was fastened about his body; Esmeralda Charley made a half-hitch around a stout little pine tree and Carron, begining the descent, with the first step, loosed a shower of little stones.
They were not such pebbles as lodge in granite crevices, but particles of the rock itself. It was shale, treacherous stuff. Firm looking projections crumbled away under his feet like cheese. There was not a bush for a hold, not a solid thing anywhere, to grasp. Now he slid, and the rope sprang taut on his body; now on hands and knees he crept, slowly working his way down, backward. Half way down his foot found what seemed not a projection but a crevice, large enough to get his toes into. He tested it, rested weight upon it, felt in-
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