“I shall, indeed, have to depend on you almost wholly; and the fact that another must look to you in such a strait will do more to keep you up than all cordials and stimulants.  I can do very little myself—­”

“Forgive me, Graydon.  You know I am not indifferent.  Are you in much pain?” and her voice was very gentle.

“Not yet.  You must act contrary to your instincts for once, and exert all your ingenuity to attract attention.  First, we must have a fire; meanwhile I shall light a cigar, which will help me to think and banish the impression that we are lost babes in the woods.  The smoke, you see, will draw eyes to this spot—­the smoke of the fire, I mean.”

“I’m following you correctly.”

“You must have followed me very bravely, heroic little woman that you are!  You are indeed unlike other girls, who would never have reached me except by tumbling after—­”

“Come, no more reminiscences till you are safe at the hotel, and your leg mended.”

“Very well.  I direct, but you command.  As soon as we have a column of smoke ascending from this point you must try to find an open space near here, and wave something white as a signal of distress.”

He had scarcely concluded before she was at work.  The prostrate tree against which he had managed to place her at such pain to his broken limb served as a back-log, and soon a column of smoke was ascending.  At times she would turn a shy, half-doubting, half-questioning glance at him, but he would smile so naturally and speak so frankly that the suspicion that he had heard her words almost passed from her mind.

“Madge,” he said, “in finding an outlook toward the hotel or valley, don’t go far away, if possible.  It makes me awfully nervous to think of you climbing alone.”

She found a projecting rock beneath them within calling distance, and on an extemporized pole she fastened the napkins.  At his suggestion she waved them only downward and upward, at the same time sending out her powerful voice from time to time in a cry for help.

He, left alone, sometimes groaned from an unusually severe twinge of pain, and again laughed softly to himself over the situation.  He knew that the question of their being sought and found was only one of time, and he would have been willing to have had all his bones broken should this have been needful to secure the knowledge which now thrilled his very soul with gladness.  The past grew perfectly clear, and the pearl of a woman who had given herself to him so long ago gained a more priceless value with every moment’s thought, “Ah, sweet Madge!  I’m the blessed idiot you loved and toiled for at Santa Barbara!  I shouldn’t have believed that such a thing could happen in this humdrum world.”

Nor would it seem that the attention of even a fraction of that great world could be obtained.  The shadows of evening began to gather, and Madge, at Graydon’s call, returned, wearied and somewhat discouraged.