Doubtless Miss Armitage followed his suggestion, for she sat thoughtfully, almost absently, watching him down the slope.  At the foot of the vale, the goat-woman joined him, and it was clear he again used his magic art, for presently he had her chaining for him and holding an improvised flag, while he estimated the section line.  But finally, when they left the bed of the pocket and began to cross-cut up the opposite mountainside, the girl rose and looked in the direction of the spring.  It was cooler; a breeze was drawing down from the upper ridge; a few thin clouds like torn gauze veiled the sky overhead; the blue lost intensity.  She began to walk across the bench towards the granite chimneys.  In a little while she found the dry reservoir, walled, where the plateau lifted, in the semi-circular bluff; then she stopped at the foot of an arid gully that rose between this basin and a small shoulder which supported the first needle.  This was the stairway she had seen Tisdale descend, and presently she commenced to climb it slowly, grasping bunches of the tenacious sage or jutting points of rock to ease her weight.

The stairs ended in a sharp incline covered with debris from the decomposing pillars; splinters of granite shifted under her tread; she felt the edges cutting through her shoes.  Fragments began to rattle down; one larger rock crashed over the bluff into the dry basin.  Then, at last, she was on the level, fighting for breath.  She turned, trembling, and braced herself against the broken chimney to look back.  She shrank closer to the needle and shook her head.  It was as though she said:  “I never could go back alone.”

But when her glance moved to the opposite mountainside, Tisdale was no longer in sight.  And that shoulder was very narrow; it presented a sheer front to the vale, like the base of a monument, so that between the chimney and the drop to the gully there was little room in which to stand.  She began to choose a course, picking her foothold cautiously, zigzagging as she had seen Hollis do on the slope above.  Midway another knob jutted, supporting a second pillar and a single pine tree, but as she came under the chimney she was forced to hurry.  Loose chippings of granite started at every step.  They formed little torrents, undermining, rushing, threatening to sweep her down; and she reached the ledge in a panic.  Then she felt the stable security of the pine against her body and for a moment let herself go, sinking to the foot of the tree and covering her eyes with her hands.

Up there a stiff wind was blowing, and presently she saw the snow-peak she had missed in the vale.  The ridge lifted less abruptly from this second spur, and in a little while she rose and pushed on, lagging sometimes, stumbling, to the level of the plateau.  The Wenatchee range, of which it was a part, stretched bleak and forbidding, enclosing all those minor arid gulfs down to the final, long, scarred headland set