He waited for fully a minute, but no answer came back. His face grew more
disturbed than ever.

"He is hurt, that's sartin," he muttered. "Like as not he broke his neck."

Barringford always carried a bit of rope with him and he now had the same
piece used in dragging the elk to the Morris homestead. Taking this, he
tied it to a stout bush, and by this means lowered himself to the very edge
of the cliff.

Night was now approaching, and at the bottom of the gully all was so dark
he could see only with the greatest of difficulty. The torrent ran among
rough rocks and brushwood, with here and there a patch of long grass bent
flat from the winter's snows.

"Henry! Where are you?"

Again there was no answer, and now Barringford was thoroughly alarmed. He
remembered how Mrs. Morris had asked him to keep watch over her son.

"Got to git down to him somehow," he told himself. "I hope he's only
stunned."

After a general survey of the situation, the old frontiersman decided that
the cliff terminated at a point several hundred yards to the southward.
Accordingly, he climbed up the hill with care and commenced to make a
detour in that direction.

It was hard work to make any movement forward, for the rocks were unusually
rough and between them were hollows filled with mud, dead leaves and water.