When they slowed up, there was the agonizing dread of pursuit.

And through it all there burned the torturing suggestion that the rope might break.
Mother Earth felt good that night, when strong hands reached up and lifted me out of the noose that failed of reaching the bottom by about a man's height.

Come to think of it, it wasn't mother earth at that.

It was the stinking carcass of a camel only half autopsied by the vultures, that my feet first rested on--brother, perhaps, to the beast I had put out of his agony that afternoon.
The others came down the rope hand-over-hand, Grim last.

I suppose he stayed up there with his pistol, ready for contingencies.
He had his nerve with him, for he had fastened the upper end of the rope to a piece of broken stone laid across a gap that the crusaders had made in the ramparts, centuries ago, for the Christian purpose of pouring boiling oil and water on their foes.