Griswold was shouting something; it did not matter what. He heard it faintly above the clatter of the rocks. He must be close to the edge now--Bartlesville--the Commercial Club--Abe Cone--and then Mr. Sprudell hit something with a bump! He had a sensation as of a hatpin--many hatpins--penetrating his tender flesh, but that was nothing compared to the fact that he had stopped, while the slide of shale was rushing by. He was not dead! but he was too astonished and relieved to immediately wonder why.
Then he weakly raised his head and looked cautiously over his shoulder lest the slightest movement start him travelling again. What miracle had saved his life? The answer was before him. When he came down the slide in the fortunate attitude of a clothespin, the Fates, who had other plans for him, it seemed, steered him for a small tree of the stout mountain mahogany, which has a way of pushing up in most surprising places.
"Don't move!" called Griswold. "I'll come and get ye!"
Unnecessary admonition. Although Sprudell was impaled on the thick, sharp thorns like a naturalist's captive butterfly, he scarcely breathed, much less attempted to get up.
"Bill, I was near the gates," said Sprudell solemnly when Griswold, at no small risk to himself, had snaked him back to solid ground. "Fortuna audaces juvat!"
"If that's Siwash for 'close squeak,' it were; and," with an anxious glance at the ominous sky, "'tain't over."