“You shut up,” he ordered.  “The sound of your voice is enough to start the whole thing going.”

“If I ever start going—­” Smoke began.

“Shut up!  You ain’t going to ever start going.  Now do what I say.  That’s right—­under the shoulders.  Make it fast.  Now!  Start!  Get a move on, but easy as you go.  I’ll take in the slack.  You just keep a-coming.  That’s it.  Easy.  Easy.”

Smoke was still a dozen feet away when the final collapse of the bridge began.  Without noise, but in a jerky way, it crumbled to an increasing tilt.

“Quick!” Carson called, coiling in hand-over-hand on the slack of the rope which Smoke’s rush gave him.

When the crash came, Smoke’s fingers were clawing into the hard face of the wall of the crevasse, while his body dragged back with the falling bridge.  Carson, sitting up, feet wide apart and braced, was heaving on the rope.  This effort swung Smoke in to the side wall, but it jerked Carson out of his niche.  Like a cat, he faced about, clawing wildly for a hold on the ice and slipping down.  Beneath him, with forty feet of taut rope between them, Smoke was clawing just as wildly; and ere the thunder from below announced the arrival of the bridge, both men had come to rest.  Carson had achieved this first, and the several pounds of pull he was able to put on the rope had helped bring Smoke to a stop.

Each lay in a shallow niche, but Smoke’s was so shallow that, tense with the strain of flattening and sticking, nevertheless he would have slid on had it not been for the slight assistance he took from the rope.  He was on the verge of a bulge and could not see beneath him.  Several minutes passed, in which they took stock of the situation and made rapid strides in learning the art of sticking to wet and slippery ice.  The little man was the first to speak.

“Gee!” he said; and, a minute later, “If you can dig in for a moment and slack on the rope, I can turn over.  Try it.”

Smoke made the effort, then rested on the rope again.  “I can do it,” he said.  “Tell me when you’re ready.  And be quick.”

“About three feet down is holding for my heels,” Carson said.  “It won’t take a moment.  Are you ready?”

“Go on.”

It was hard work to slide down a yard, turn over and sit up; but it was even harder for Smoke to remain flattened and maintain a position that from instant to instant made a greater call upon his muscles.  As it was, he could feel the almost perceptible beginning of the slip when the rope tightened and he looked up into his companion’s face.  Smoke noted the yellow pallor of sun-tan forsaken by the blood, and wondered what his own complexion was like.  But when he saw Carson, with shaking fingers, fumble for his sheath-knife, he decided the end had come.  The man was in a funk and was going to cut the rope.

“Don’t m-mind m-m-me,” the little man chattered.  “I ain’t scared.  It’s only my nerves, gosh-dang them.  I’ll b-b-be all right in a minute.”