Enoch’s eyes followed Diana’s gesture.  “I know,” he said, softly.  “It’s impossible to express it.  I’ve thought of you and your work so often, down here.  Somehow, though, you do suggest the unattainable in your pictures.  It’s what makes them great.”

Diana shook her head and turned toward her tent, while Enoch lighted his pipe and began his never-ending task of bringing in drift wood.  He paused, a log on his shoulder, before Curly, who was squatting beside his muddy pan.

“Curly,” he said, “is that stuff you have on Fowler and Brown, political, financial, or a matter of personal morals?”

“Personal morals and worse!” grunted Curly.  “It’s some story!”

Enoch turned away without comment.  But the lines between his eyes deepened.

CHAPTER IX

THE CLIFF DWELLING

“Love! that which turns the meanest man to a god in some one’s eyes!  Yet I must not know it!  Suppose I cast my responsibility to the winds and . . . and yet that sense of responsibility is all that differentiates me from Minetta Lane.”—­Enoch’s Diary.

Diana began work on her films on a little folding table beside the spring.  Enoch, throwing down his log close to the cave opening, paused to watch her.  Jonas and Na-che, putting the cave in order, talked quietly to each other.  Suddenly from the river, to the right, there rose a man’s half choking, agonized shout and around the curve shot a skiff, bottom up, a man clinging to the gunwale.  The water was too wild and swift for swimming.

“The rope, Judge, the rope!” cried Mack.

Enoch picked up a coil of rope, used for staking the horses, and ran to Mack who snatched it, twirled it round his head and as the boat rushed by him, the noosed end shot across the gunwale.  The man caught it over his wrist and it was the work of but a few moments to pull him ashore.

He was a young man, with a two days’ beard on his face, clad in the universal overalls and blue flannel shirt.  He lay on the sand, too exhausted to move for perhaps five minutes, while Jonas pulled off his sodden shoes, and Na-che ran to kindle a fire and heat water.  After a moment, however the stranger began to talk.

“Almost got me that time!  Forgot to put my life preserver on.  Don’t bother about me.  I’m drowned every day.  Another boat with the rest of us should be along shortly.  Hope they salvaged some of the stuff.”

“What in time are you trying to do on the river, anyhow?” demanded Curly.  “There’s simpler ways of committing suicide.”

The young man laughed.  “Oh, we’re some more fools trying to get from Green River to Needles!”

“On a bet?” asked Mack.

“Hardly!  On a job!  Geological Survey!  Four of us!  There they come!  Whoo—­ee!”

He staggered to his feet, as another boat shot around the curve.  But this one came through in proper style, right side up, two men manning the oars and a third with a steering paddle.  With an answering shout, they ran quickly up on the shore.  They were a rough-bearded, overalled lot, young men, all of them.