Page:Caroline Lockhart--The full of the Moon.djvu/273

 shrub that somehow had spread its roots in a bit of shallow, uncertain soil.

"I can't find the foothold below and I dare not let go to look."

Clarence Strunk was quite sober now, but even with his wits about him it was no safe or easy task to reach the place to which Bob had climbed in the one desperate chance he had seen to save his life.

"The swiftness of it made me dizzy," said Bob, when he was down and seated in the buckboard. "The sprawling limbs of a tree nearly raked me off once, and the noise"—he shuddered—"the roar, the grinding together of boulders rolling like pebbles; and I saw the saddle-horse go by with his legs up! It made me nervous."

"It musta," agreed Clarence. He added reminiscently: "I mind how I felt when a Swede chased me with a knife because he said I hadn't put no lemon in the lemon pie. To be cut off in the flower of your youth thataway, with a jackknife or a cloudburst or a chunk of lead—it's hidj'ous. Do you think the rest of them made it?"

"I think so. Listen!"