Some seventy feet above them projected the first eye-bolt.  The winter accumulations of ice had twisted and bent it down till it did not stand more than a bare inch and a half above the rock—­a most difficult object to lasso as such a distance.  Time and again Hazard coiled his lariat in true cowboy fashion and made the cast, and time and again was he baffled by the elusive peg.  Nor could Gus do better.  Taking advantage of inequalities in the surface, they scrambled twenty feet up the Dome and found they could rest in a shallow crevice.  The cleft side of the Dome was so near that they could look over its edge from the crevice and gaze down the smooth, vertical wall for nearly two thousand feet.  It was yet too dark down below for them to see farther.

The peg was now fifty feet away, but the path they must cover to get to it was quite smooth, and ran at an inclination of nearly fifty degrees.  It seemed impossible, in that intervening space, to find a resting-place.  Either the climber must keep going up, or he must slide down; he could not stop.  But just here rose the danger.  The Dome was sphere-shaped, and if he should begin to slide, his course would be, not to the point from which he had started and where the Saddle would catch him, but off to the south toward Little Yosemite.  This meant a plunge of half a mile.

“I’ll try it,” Gus said simply.

They knotted the two lariats together, so that they had over a hundred feet of rope between them; and then each boy tied an end to his waist.

“If I slide,” Gus cautioned, “come in on the slack and brace yourself.  If you don’t, you’ll follow me, that’s all!”

“Ay, ay!” was the confident response.  “Better take a nip before you start?”

Gus glanced at the proffered bottle.  He knew himself and of what he was capable.  “Wait till I make the peg and you join me.  All ready?”

“Ay.”

He struck out like a cat, on all fours, clawing energetically as he urged his upward progress, his comrade paying out the rope carefully.  At first his speed was good, but gradually it dwindled.  Now he was fifteen feet from the peg, now ten, now eight—­but going, oh, so slowly!  Hazard, looking up from his crevice, felt a contempt for him and disappointment in him.  It did look easy.  Now Gus was five feet away, and after a painful effort, four feet.  But when only a yard intervened, he came to a standstill—­not exactly a standstill, for, like a squirrel in a wheel, he maintained his position on the face of the Dome by the most desperate clawing.

He had failed, that was evident.  The question now was, how to save himself.  With a sudden, catlike movement he whirled over on his back, caught his heel in a tiny, saucer-shaped depression and sat up.  Then his courage failed him.  Day had at last penetrated to the floor of the valley, and he was appalled at the frightful distance.

“Go ahead and make it!” Hazard ordered; but Gus merely shook his head.