“Hey, I heard somefing over vere,” a voice called. A second torch flared.
Chester tied a loop in the end of the clothesline, lowered it down the cleft. “Grab this,” he whispered. “And keep it quiet.”
Bandon muttered softly to himself; Chester felt the rope move as Bandon fumbled with it. “Hurry up!” Chester called.
“Haul away,” Bandon said softly. Chester braced his feet and pulled. Bandon’s feet scraped, sent small stones rattling down the rock face.
“Over vere!” two voices yelled at once. Pounding feet approached. There was a yelp and one torch went out.
“Somebody found my coon trap,” Bandon grunted. With a final heave, Chester hauled him up high enough to grip the edge of the ledge. A moment later, they stood side by side.
“I’m going on up,” Chester said. “Don’t make a sound. As soon as I reach secure footing again, I’ll lower the line.”
“Don’t waste any time,” Bandon said. “Grizz may not be able to climb up here, but he’s a pretty good hand with a long bow. A pure shame I didn’t have time to gather up my Blue-Tooth.”
“All you’d do is get us spotted quicker. Stand fast now.” Chester reached up, found a grip, pulled himself up. The going was easy enough; the fingerholds were all of a quarter of an inch deep, and the climb was not even quite vertical; there was a slope of at least three degrees. As for the height, it was negligible: a mere sixty feet or so now. A few months ago, it would have been a different story, Chester thought suddenly, smiling. In the old days, he would have clung to the cliff, bleating for help.
Abruptly, the precariousness of his position dawned on Chester. What was he, Chester W. Chester IV, doing here, climbing up the face of a vertical precipice in the dark, with a crew of ferocious back-to-nature cultists at his heels? Suddenly, the meager handholds seemed grossly inadequate. Chester froze, digging with his toes for a secure footing. The light breeze seemed to batter at him like a gale. His shoulder blades drew together in anticipation of Grizz’s long-bow bolt.
“Hey,” Bandon’s voice whispered anxiously from below. “Don’t forget me.”
Chester drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, feeling his fear-tensed muscles loosen. He was glad Kuve hadn’t been around to see how easily he’d forgotten his training in a moment of panic. He went up another ten feet, found a foot-wide ledge and lowered the rope. There were three torches below now, near the foot of the cliff.
“Here’s some footprints,” someone shouted.
“Hey, look up vere,” another voice shouted. “Did you see somefing move?”
“It’s him!”
“Who’s got a bow handy?”
“Bandon,” Chester called softly. “Gather up a handful of rocks, then tie the rope around your waist. You pepper ’em while I pull you up. Maybe it will be enough to spoil their aim—or at least make them nervous.”
“Sure.”
Chester heard the rasp of stone, then a grunt as Bandon pegged one. There was a loud yell from below.
“Got the skunk!” Bandon whispered loudly. A moment later a second cry rang out.
“What’s goin’ on?” someone wanted to know.
“Rocks fallin’.”
“Ohhh, my head!”
“Bandon, hurry up! Get that rope tied!” Chester felt the rope vibrate.
“All right,” Bandon called. Chester heaved at the rope. It was hard work this time, with Bandon too fully occupied to assist by clawing his way up as Chester pulled. The rope cut into Chester’s hands. An arrow clanged against the stone ten feet to one side, striking red sparks. Chester grunted and hauled. More arrows struck, one no more than a yard away. One of the torches below went out as its bearer yelled.
“Don’t throw at the torches,” Chester gasped. “All they do is blind them.”
“Oh, sorry,” Bandon said cheerfully. “The varmints are thick as fleas in a bearhide down there. Can’t hardly miss.”
He crawled up beside Chester. “Whoosh! That rope cuts! And we’ve still got a ways to go.” An arrow ricocheted off the rock wall a yard from Chester’s head.
“Let’s get out of here. They’ll bracket in on us before long. If you’re hit, try not to yell.”
“I’ll keep ’em busy,” Bandon said. He stooped, came up with a head-sized stone, and dropped it down into the darkness. It hit once with a crash; a moment later three hoarse yells sounded almost together.
“Ha!” Bandon exulted. “That’s showin’ ’em.”
Three painful climbs and half an hour later Chester and Bandon lay stretched full-length on a wide ledge. The noise below had dwindled to an occasional half-hearted curse and a few groans. The arrows had stopped coming.
“Looks like we got away clean,” Bandon said. “The skunks sure gave up easy.”
“We’ll rest a few minutes,” Chester said. “Then we’ll go on to the top and head back toward the Center—”
“Oh-oh,” Bandon said.
“What’s the matter?”
“Reckon I forgot somethin’.”
“Well, I don’t think we’d better go back for it, under the circumstances.”
“It’s not that. But I forgot to tell you. This cliff we’ve gone and climbed up on: no wonder the boys aren’t too worried about getting’ after us.”
“Well?”
“There’s no way down. If you’d seen it in daylight you’d know what I mean. It’s a mesa, and the side we’re climbing is the easy one.”
* * *
Hot morning sun beat down on Chester’s short-cropped head as he walked along the cliff edge to the boulder against which Bandon sat waiting.
“It’s like I told you,” Bandon said. “We’re stuck.”
“Why didn’t you mention the topographical peculiarities of the place to me last night, when I first announced I was heading this way?” Chester asked.
“I figured it wouldn’t matter, ’cause I didn’t figure you’d be able to get up here anyhow. I figured you’d be back in a few minutes, beggin’ my pardon and askin’ for that safe-conduct. I guess I made kind of a fool of myself.”
“I won’t be so uncivil as to argue that point.” Chester peered over the precipice. It dropped vertically for fifty feet, then shelved back. The base was visible a hundred yards below, plunging sheer into a green blanket of treetops.
“Grizz’ll have the boys spotted all the way around, and trip wires rigged,” Bandon said. “Even if we had a way to get down, they’d be on top of us like flies on a beer keg before we got out shirt tails tucked in.”
Chester scaled a rock out over the forest, watched it curve and drop down, down . . .
“Poor Genie,” he said. “And Case.”
“I don’t know who you’re grievin’ over,” Bandon said, “but you can add your own name to the list. If we don’t starve up here, it’ll be because we climbed down and broke our necks—or got plugged full of arrows. One thing we don’t have to do is get heat stroke. Let’s get over under the trees.”
They walked across the stony ground toward the rising mound of wooded land that occupied the center of the ten-acre island of the mesa top.
“We’d better look around and see if there’s anything edible growing up here,” Chester said.
“And water,” Bandon added. “I’m already gettin’ thirsty.”
“Maybe we can find some game. Why don’t you set to work and make yourself a new bow? I’ll start on a shelter, in case it rains—and we’ll have to rig some sort of catch-basin, if we don’t find a spring.”
“What’s the use? It’ll just stretch out our dyin’. Maybe we ought to just take a flyin’ jump. Maybe we’d land on a couple of Grizz’s skunks.”
“Here, none of that,” Chester said sharply. “We may find that we can live quite comfortably here—in spite of the lack of canned beans and television. This is your opportunity to try the free life you’re so fond of.”
“Sure, but . . . ” Bandon muttered.
“You start off in that direction.” Chester pointed toward a stand of slender, bluish-needled conifers. “I’ll check over there. We’ll meet back here at the edge of the woods in an hour.”
* * *
Chester laid aside the rusted hatchet with which he had been pounding in a stake.
“Any luck?” he called as Bandon tramped from the underbrush.
“I guess so,” Bandon said dispiritedly. “There’s a good stand of ash back there I can make some kind of bow out of. And I found some kind of an old tent—”
Chester came to his feet. “You mean the place is inhabited?”
Bandon shook his head. “Not any more. Come on. I need help to get it out. We can use the material to build that catch-basin, and I guess there’s enough over to put a roof on that hut of yours.” He nodded toward Chester’s embryonic framework of sticks bound together with lengths of clothesline wire.
Chester followed Bandon back into the woods, pushing through tangled underbrush, squeezing between interlaced saplings. The taller trees became thicker and the ground more open as they progressed. Ahead, draped in the branches of a dead pine, Chester saw a billow of grayish-white, a snarl of lines trailing down almost to the ground.