top wasn't more than a couple feet wide. Covered with snow, it created the illusion of a knife's edge. To the left, the down slope appeared walkable, if dangerous, but to the right it fell away almost vertically for several stories. Kier reached down with the line and pulled it as if he were running it through the piton. Just next to him was a sheer drop created by a massive split in the granite right where the ridge joined the shoulder of the mountain in front of them. It was as if a giant had pulled lengthwise along the ridge neatly severing it from the mountain and leaving a straight-walled, U-shaped, vertical fracture.
'Perhaps you could go first, and I could help lower you down. What do you think?''
She was determined to show him no more of her fear, although she hadn't a clue as to how she would do what he asked. Kier wrapped the line around her thighs and waist, then passed it between her legs.
'Have you ever rappelled?'
'At the academy we did it a couple of times. But that was in broad daylight on an artificial rock wall. We had equipment. I had eaten. I hadn't been deathly sick. I had strength. I'll manage.'
'Okay. Well, this will be very similar, only I will lower you. But if I slip or let go, this safety line, which you will pay out, will also be through the piton to stop your fall. You must hold the safety line and not let it slide through your fingers, except when you want to go down. Now lean back and I'll hold your weight.'
She stood with her back to the sheer drop. Kier held the main line a foot from her chest. It went around his shoulder, across his back, down to the piton, then to her waistline.
'Go ahead and squat down.'
Warily, she lowered on her haunches.
'Now lean back and let the rope take your weight.'
She froze.
'Go ahead, just lean back.'
God, dear God, she prayed. Her heart pounded and her hands shook. She felt humiliated. She was not a weak person and what was being asked of her was not extremely difficult.
She continued trembling. It was getting worse. By now a minute had passed. Kier squatted down close to her. His light illuminated their faces.
'Let's rest a minute. Just sit.' He pulled her back from the cliff to sit on the pack. 'I remember when I was a kid, I saw this movie on TV about Cheyenne Bodine, a man who was sent to a forest to hunt a creature that was killing people in the night. These guys would sit around the campfire and something-before it attacked-would throw dirt out of the bushes. It scared me bad… had me shaking under the covers. Turned out it was a bear.'
'I'm trying-' she said.
'There's time,' he continued firmly. 'I'd lie in my bed, scared out of my mind. Now, I know what you're thinking. It's in your head that I was just a kid, that you're an FBI agent, and this story is demeaning because-'
'The story is about normal childhood fears,'' she interjected sharply. 'This is about two adults on a mountain. If you'll shut up, somehow I'm gonna do this.'
Gritting her teeth, she stood, went to the ledge, and held the rope in her left hand.
'Well, pull on the rope, give me some resistance.'
He pulled firmly. She clamped her jaw, willing herself to lean back, trusting him to hold her. She took one baby step down the rock face. He played out a few inches of line, and she took another. The first few feet were not as frightening as she had expected. She was near him, and she could see. As she descended, though, the shadows deepened, and Kier became a monolith in the soft glow of the penlight that he held in his mouth. It was like descending into a well. By thinking about the smooth rock and occasional bush she passed, she did not dwell upon what might be coming.
After she'd taken perhaps fifteen downward steps, Kier stopped, and she felt the pain of the line cutting into her thighs.
'What's going on?'
His light shone over the edge.
'Look behind you.' A few feet away on the other side of the chasm a snow-covered tree-some kind of needled evergreen-grew from the opposite wall. It looked gnarly, old, stunted, the base emerging from a crack in the vertical rock wall. The thick trunk made an L so that the top grew straight up, parallel to the cliff. Behind the top of the tree Kier's light shone upon the lower lip of a cave mouth in the cliff face.
'You'll need to throw your end of this line around the tree; then I'll show you how to use it to swing across.'
Her heart sank as Kier dropped another line. Throwing the lariat to catch the treetop would be tough. The notion of somehow swinging her body through space, across the chasm, was terrifying. She couldn't even imagine climbing from the tree into the cave.
'I've got the end of the line. You need to get that loop at your end of the line around the top of the tree. From up here I'll work it down past one or two of the larger branches.'
'Why did you get me down here and then tell me this?' Kier was silent. 'Never mind, I know.'
Only a vigorous throw would catch the broken top of the main trunk in the loop of the lariat. Turning sideways, she studied the tree. Maybe twelve feet away horizontally, the stubby treetop waited to be noosed some two feet above her height. From the top of the tree to its gnarled base was about twenty-five feet. The floor of the cave stood at eye level.
Jessie's first toss hit the tree's broken top. But when she tried to pull it tight, it slipped off. Three more throws were equally useless.
'I can't,' she called.
'When you throw again, think only of the tree.'
As he said it, she realized that she had been thinking of the rope, not the tree. With nothing to lose and a sense of wild abandon she threw the loop as hard as she could. To her amazement, it fell neatly over the treetop.
'Very impressive,' Kier said. 'In a minute we'll have a bridge line.'
She felt a surge of satisfaction.
From his higher angle, Kier shimmied and shook the line down past the first stubby branch and pulled it tight, catching the main trunk.
'Grab this,' Kier said as he dangled another length of line until she had it firmly in her grasp. 'This is the swing line. Pull the bridge line taut and tie this swing line to it the way I showed you. Tie it as close to the tree as you can.'
She tried it three times before convincing herself that she was doing it right. Then Kier took the belly out of the bridge line, pulling it taut to the piton, forming a single line bridge across the chasm on a steep angle from the cliff top down to the treetop.
The swing line was attached to the bridge line at about the middle of the chasm and was now well above Jessie's head. She would have to push off the rock wall and, in a pendulumlike motion, reach the tree.
'Okay. There should be a ledge there. Stand on it.'
She did as he said, clinging to the rock wall.
''I'm going to loosen the line that holds you so I can let it out as you swing yourself across. If you don't make it, you've got to turn feet first to this side so you can push off again.'
There was silence. If the tree on the opposite side gave way when Jessie swung, she would slam back against the rock face, dangling from her safety rope.
Taking a deep breath, she grabbed the swing line.
'Ready?'
She hesitated. Could she make herself do it one more time? The black of the abyss below engulfed her.
'Look at the stars.'
She did and drank them in. Something in that vast beyond made the chasm less important, her own mortality more acceptable. She pushed off into the jaws of her terror, leaving her spirit in the arms of the universe.
Swinging easily she covered the eight feet to a branch.
'Pull yourself in.'
She grabbed the branch like a cat over water, hauling herself to the tree. For a moment, she laid her cheek against the trunk of the pine, concentrating on the rough texture of the reddish brown bark, its sharp scent.
Her eyes cast about for a way to get to the cave. Using her light, she could see that the rock surface was
