Satisfied that the man's skull was not fractured, he drew the edges of the wound together and fastened them with strips of plaster. A few minutes later Bennie, followed by Zephyr, hurriedly entered the office. Paying no attention to their startled exclamations, Firmstone said:
"I wish you would look after Jim. He's badly hurt. He'll tell you about it. You said at the Devil's Elbow?" turning to the driver.
Zephyr glanced critically at the man; then, making up his mind that he was not needed, he said:
"I'll go along with you. Are you heeled?"
Firmstone made no audible reply, but took down his revolver and cartridge-belt, and buckled them on.
"'Tain't the heels you want; it's wings and fins. They won't be much good, either. The whole outfit's in the San Miguel. I followed it that far, and then pulled out." The driver was attempting to hold out gamely, but the excitement and the severe shaking-up were evidently telling on him.
Firmstone and Zephyr left the office and followed the wagon-trail down the cañon. Neither spoke a word.
They reached the scene of the wreck and, still silent, began to look carefully about. A hundred feet below them the San Miguel, swollen by melting snows, foamed and roared over its boulder-strewn bed. Near the foot of the cliff one of the horses was impaled on a jagged rock; its head and shoulders in the lapping water. In mid-stream and further down the other was pressed by the current against a huge rock that lifted above the flood. No trace of the stage was to be seen. That, broken into fragments by the fall, had been swept away.
The spot where the accident occurred was a dangerous one at best. For some distance after leaving the mill the trail followed a nearly level bench of hard slate rock, then, dipping sharply downward, cut across a long rock-slide that reached to the summit of the mountain a thousand feet above. On the opposite side a square-faced buttress crowded the trail to the very brink of the cañon. The trail followed along the foot of this buttress for a hundred feet or more, and at the edge it again turned from the gorge at an acute angle. At the turning-point a cleft, twenty feet wide, cut the cliff from the river-bed to a point far above the trail. A bridge had spanned the cleft, but it was gone. The accident had been caused by the giving way of the bridge when the stage was on it.
"Well, what do you make of it?" Firmstone turned to Zephyr and Zephyr shook his head.