The edge reached, the boys gazed down, but almost instantly Jerry had whirled to an upright position and the watching girls could not tell whether his expression was more of terror than of exultation. Surely there was a mingling of both.
Dick, who had backed several feet before sitting upright, was frankly shocked by what he had seen.
For a moment neither of them spoke. “Boys!” Dora cried. “The stage coach is down there, isn’t it? But since you expected to find it, why are you so startled?”
Jerry was the first to reply. “Well, it’s pretty awful to see what’s left of a tragedy like that. I reckon you girls would better not look.”
“I won’t, if you don’t want me to,” Mary agreed, “but do tell us about it. After all these years, what can there be left?”
Jerry glanced at Dick, who, always pale, was actually white.
“I’ll confess it rather got me, just at first,” the Eastern boy acknowledged.
Dora, impatient at the slowness of the revelation, and eager to see for herself what shocking thing was over the ledge, started to walk toward the edge, but Dick, realizing her intention, sprang up and caught her arm. “Let us tell you first what we saw, Dora,” he pleaded, “and then, if you still want to see it, we won’t prevent you. It won’t be so much of a shock when you are prepared.”
“Well?” Dora stood waiting.
The boys were on their feet. Jerry began. “When the horses reared and plunged off the road, they must have rolled with the stage over and over.”