But instead of bloody bones hundreds of feet below, there was a living Margot, on her right side, facing the cliff edge and gasping for breath. A ledge of rock, maybe eight feet below the trail, had stopped her fall. It extended about six feet away from the cliff and was maybe ten feet long. Margot was very close to the edge.
"Margot!" Conroy called. "Don’t move! We’ll get you up!"
He sat upright, shrugged out of his pack, and opened it. He pulled out a length of rope. Owen was still paralyzed, but I was watching Conroy, who had started tying knots in the rope at about every ten to twelve inches.
"Nathan! I’m going to crawl toward you and give you one end of the rope. You move toward me, slowly. Don’t cross in front of Owen. Erik, can you hold Nathan’s feet? And Hugh, you stabilize Erik
