In the instant of time allowed him for making observation, Clancy saw only that the other foot traveler was a youngish chap, and that he was loitering along unconscious of the speeding car behind him.
The driver of the machine did not slacken gait in the least, but contented himself with merely sounding the horn. Wildly Clancy cried out for the stranger to jump. The stranger, casting one frightened glance over his shoulder, jumped without delay—but in the wrong direction.
Alighting on the edge of the cliff, he fell and rolled—over the edge. The car raced on and vanished behind a shoulder of rock, leaving a cloud of dust to mark its passage. Clancy ran forward, badly shaken by what he firmly believed would turn out to be a tragedy.
The dust was flicked away by the wind, and, as the air cleared, Clancy fell to his knees on the cliff’s edge.
“Hello!” he called, in a voice husky with apprehension.
There was no answer, and the gruesome fears of the red-headed fellow increased. Some of the dust was rolling below the brink of the wall and he could not see clearly. Straining his eyes downward, he shouted again.
This time he was electrified by hearing an answering shout. It came up through the thinning fog of dust and was strong and, apparently, from near at hand. The fellow who had rolled over the edge had not fallen to the bottom of the cliff, after all.
“Where are you?” demanded Clancy.
“I’m where I’m glad to be, but where I wish I wasn’t,” was the rather queer response. “Feller that’s born to be hung or drowned, howsomever, ain’t goin’ to be put out of business by a chug wagon and a bit of up-and-down wall. Pard, do somethin’ for me. I don’t reckon I can do a thing for myself, and the position I’m in is right juberous.”