It was late in the afternoon when Ed and Westy who had been working their way upstream all day awarded with a goodly string of gleaming trout, found themselves on a high and rocky point from which Vulture Cliff was plainly visible. In the clear mountain air it seemed as if they might almost touch it. Tired from their scrambles and satisfied with their catch, the boys stretched out on the rocks and gazed up at the cliff. They were separated from it by a narrow gulch of such dizzy depths that Ed said it made him seasick to look down.
“Don’t look down, then, look up,” said Westy. “You can see the vultures from here.”
“Gee, so you can. Don’t they look like airplanes? I wonder how big they are?”
“Well,” said Westy, “that guide at the Hermitage said he killed one once that measured over eight feet from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other, spread out. Of course he didn’t kill that one on this reservation, but I bet these are just as big.”
“I bet they are, and my goodness look what a lot of them there are. They must scent something dead over there,” cried Ed in excitement.
“Dead nothing!” Westy disagreed. “Something’s scaring them! Look! There’s a man! Why, it must be Mr. Wilde; you can see him as plain as plain. I don’t see Billy anywhere. Now Mr. Wilde’s gone back in the bushes. Let’s climb up higher and watch.”
They scrambled higher to a point that afforded a very clear view of the precipice opposite. Neither man was now to be seen, but several vultures were circling the cliff and others joined them, perching clumsily on the rock shrugging their ugly humped shoulders in disgust at being disturbed. Out from the wooded height there jutted a long narrow shelf of bare rock that overhung the deep ravine below. This was the vultures’ roost and outlook. In crevices along here the monstrous birds had their great awkward nests and here “on top of the world,” as Ed said, their little ones were hatched. On the edge of this shelf there grew a solitary crooked pine, deformed in its efforts to keep a difficult foothold in the barren rock against many a mountain tempest. At the foot of this tree an object caught the boys’ eyes. “What’s that?” they both cried at once, and squinting against the afternoon sun they shaded their eyes in true Indian fashion and peered intently. It couldn’t be! It was! There was no mistaking a scout uniform even at this distance. Yet neither boy would believe his eyes. The thing they saw seemed too impossible to be true! Both together they said the same thing at once.
“That can’t he Warde!” They looked at one another and then back again.
“As sure as you’re born, that’s Warde Hollister sitting under that tree on the very tip edge of the cliff!”
Westy was so breathless that he could only gasp.
“Why, my gosh!” said Ed irritably, “he’s as crazy as a June bug to sit up there on top of the Woolworth and let his silly legs hang over the edge. Hasn’t he got any sense?”
“Haven’t you heard,” said Westy, “of people who lose their senses when they get up on something high and want to jump off? What if——”
“What if——” echoed Ed and both felt too horrified to say more. Instinctively they crouched low as if the very sight of Warde so near the dizzy edge made them cling closer to solid rock themselves, not only for their own peace of mind but as if their act might hold Warde back, too.
But now another horror threatened. It was plain that the vultures resented this stranger in their midst. Sweeping forth with wide wings several vultures, apparently startled from their fastnesses on the rocks, swooped out and circled the lone pine.
Mindful of the ghastly story Buck Whitley had told of vultures, both boys shudde............