“You don’t have to have a light, do you?” Brocky insisted on being informed.  “You see, we can’t have it.  Where’m I hurt, you want to know?  Mostly right here in my side.”

Virginia’s hands found the rude bandage, damp and sticky.

“It’s nonsense about not having a light,” she said, turning toward Norton.

“No,” said the wounded man.  “Nonsense nothing, is it Rod?  How’re we going to have a fire when my matches are all gone and Rod’s matches. . . .”

“Mr. Norton,” Virginia cut in crisply, “in spite of your friend’s talk and in spite of the bluff he is putting up he is pretty badly hurt.  You give me some sort of a light, I don’t care if they see it down at San Juan, or you shoulder the responsibility.  Which is it?”

Norton turned and was gone in the darkness; to Virginia’s eyes it seemed that he was swallowed up by the cliff’s themselves, as though they had opened and accepted him and closed after him.  She supposed that he had gone to seek what scanty dry fuel one might find here.  But in a moment he was back carrying a lighted lantern.

“Look here, Rod. . . .” expostulated Brocky.

“Shut up, Brocky,” answered Norton quietly.  And, passing the lantern to the girl.  “If you’ll carry that I’ll carry Brocky.  It’s only a few steps and I won’t hurt him.  We can make him more comfortable there; and besides, we can’t leave him out here in the sun to-morrow.”

Somewhat mystified, Virginia took the lantern and her own surgical case from the sheriff and watched him stoop and gather the tall form of his friend into his arms.  Then going the way he indicated, straight across the tiny flat, she lighted the way.  She heard the wounded man groan once; then, his teeth set to guard his lips, Brocky was silent.

After a dozen steps she came to a steep-sided, narrow chasm giving passageway not six feet wide which twisted this way and that before her.

“Look out,” called Norton sharply.  “Watch where you step now.  Go slow.”

Virginia swinging her lantern up shoulder-high, looking ahead, grew instantly stock-still, a shiver tingling along her spine.  The narrow defile through which she had passed had led out of the ring of peaks and now abruptly debouched into nothingness.  As she had turned with the twisting passageway, expecting to see another wall of rock before her, she saw instead the sky filled with stars.  She stood almost at the edge of a sheer precipice.

“Throw the light to the left now,” commanded Norton.  “See what looks like the entrance to a cave?  We go in there.”

She walked on, moving slowly, warily, a little faint from the one startled view before her, her body tight pressed to the rocks upon the left, her feet only a pace from the edge of the cliff.  Now she saw the mouth of the cave, a black ragged hole just above a flat rock which thrust itself outward so that it seemed hanging, balanced insecurely, over the abyss.  By the pale rays of the lantern she saw the fairly smooth, gently sloping floor of the cavern; then, stooping, she passed in, turned, and held the light for Norton.