He was already soaking wet, so he did not mind the rain as he ran over the trail to the Yellow Dragon.  The storm was with him, and it was easy going, although there was no Hall at the other end of it to man the brake for him and regulate the speed of the car.  This he did for himself, however, by means of a stout rope, which he passed, with a turn, round the stationary cable.

As the full force of the wind struck him in mid-air, swaying the cable and whistling and roaring past it, and rocking and careening the car, he appreciated more fully what must be the condition of mind of Spillane and his wife.  And this appreciation gave strength to him, as, safely across, he fought his way up the other bank, in the teeth of the gale, to the Yellow Dream cable.

To his consternation, he found the drum in thorough working order.  Everything was running smoothly at both ends.  Where was the hitch?  In the middle, without a doubt.

From this side, the car containing Spillane was only two hundred and fifty feet away.  He could make out the man and woman through the whirling vapor, crouching in the bottom of the car and exposed to the pelting rain and the full fury of the wind.  In a lull between the squalls he shouted to Spillane to examine the trolley of the car.

Spillane heard, for he saw him rise up cautiously on his knees, and with his hands go over both trolley-wheels.  Then he turned his face toward the bank.

“She’s all right, kid!”

Jerry heard the words, faint and far, as from a remote distance.  Then what was the matter?  Nothing remained but the other and empty car, which he could not see, but which he knew to be there, somewhere in that terrible gulf two hundred feet beyond Spillane’s car.

His mind was made up on the instant.  He was only fourteen years old, slightly and wirily built; but his life had been lived among the mountains, his father had taught him no small measure of “sailoring,” and he was not particularly afraid of heights.

In the tool-box by the drum he found an old monkey-wrench and a short bar of iron, also a coil of fairly new Manila rope.  He looked in vain for a piece of board with which to rig a “boatswain’s chair.”  There was nothing at hand but large planks, which he had no means of sawing, so he was compelled to do without the more comfortable form of saddle.

The saddle he rigged was very simple.  With the rope he made merely a large loop round the stationary cable, to which hung the empty car.  When he sat in the loop his hands could just reach the cable conveniently, and where the rope was likely to fray against the cable he lashed his coat, in lieu of the old sack he would have used had he been able to find one.

These preparations swiftly completed, he swung out over the chasm, sitting in the rope saddle and pulling himself along the cable by his hands.  With him he carried the monkey-wrench and short iron bar and a few spare feet of rope.  It was a slightly up-hill pull, but this he did not mind so much as the wind.  When the furious gusts hurled him back and forth, sometimes half twisting him about, and he gazed down into the gray depths, he was aware that he was afraid.  It was an old cable.  What if it should break under his weight and the pressure of the wind?