"What is it, and where are you, Ned?" answered Chance.
"Here, underneath you. Look sharp and lend me a hand, I can't hold on much longer!"
By Ned's tones his need was urgent, and yet Chance could not get a glimpse of him anywhere. Dropping on to his knees and crawling to the edge, Steve leaned over until half his body was beyond the edge of the cliff. Then he saw his friend, but even then he did not comprehend his peril. The rock wall at the point at which Ned had tried to scale it ended in a kind of coping, which now projected over his head; but as if to make amends for this, a stout little juniper bush offered the climber a convenient hand-rail by which to swing himself up on to the top. And yet with the juniper within reach of him, there hung Ned Corbett yelling for help.
"Why don't you get hold of the bush, Ned, and haul yourself up? I cain't reach you from here," cried Steve.
"Daren't do it!" came the short answer. "There's a hornet's nest on it!" and as Ned spoke Steve caught sight of a great pear-shaped structure of dry mud which hung from the bush over the creek.
"Well, get down and come round my way."
"Can't do it. I can't get back," answered Ned, who, like many another climber, had managed to draw himself up by his hands to a spot from which descent was impossible.
At that moment, whilst Steve was devising some kind of extempore ladder or rope, there was a rattle of falling stones, and a cry: "Look out, Steve, catch hold of me if you can!" and as the frail hold of his hands and feet gave way, Ned made a desperate spring and clutched wildly at the very bough from which that innocent-looking globe of gray mud hung. The next moment, at the very first oscillation of their home, out rushed a host of furious-winged warriors straight for Corbett's face. Luckily for him Steve had clutched him by the wrist, and though the sudden attack of the hornets upon his eyes made Ned himself let go his hold, his friend managed to maintain his until, amid a perfect storm of angry wings and yellow bodies, the two lay together upon the top of the cliff. If Steve had let go at that moment when the hornets rushed out to war, Ned Corbett must have fallen back upon the rocks at the bottom of the canyon, and there would have been an end to all his troubles. As it was he lay upon the top of the cliffs, and realized that the worst of his troubles were but beginning.
"Are you much stung, Steve?" he asked.
"You bet I am, Ned. Look! that would hardly go into an eight-and-a-half lavender kid now," and Steve held out his right hand, which was already much swollen.