Reaching for the emergency tool kit, the pilot clipped long lengths of cable and spliced them together. It was a slow, drawn-out process. His hands were blistered and raw when he finished the final splice.
Using the cable as a lasso, Bud looped it around a projecting stone. Then, after filling his pockets with tools, he pulled himself up to a ledge a few feet above. From there he was able to risk throwing the line to Sandy. She leaned over the edge, with Phyl clutching her ankles.
Sandy missed the cable on the first toss but caught it on the second throw, and tied it around what seemed to be a rather firm pillar of stone. Bud gave the cable a few preliminary yanks. The stone crumbled.
“Wow!” he gasped as the pieces of rock fell past him.
The next time, the girls anchored the cable firmly around a deeply embedded boulder. The line held, and Bud, after wrapping it twice around himself, leaned back into space and began to pull himself upward.
Progress was slow and painstaking. Bud lifted one MAROONED ON THE MESA 143
foot cautiously above the other, swaying to maintain his balance. It was twenty minutes before he was safely beside the girls.
“Thank goodness!” both girls cried, hugging him in their relief.
Bud grinned, but he was too physically exhausted to make one of his usual wisecracks. It ^vas many minutes before the full import of the situation dawned on them. Many hours would pass before they were reported missing and a rescue party sent after them.
“At least we’re all safe,” Sandy remarked philosophically.
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