Leslie set her teeth together and shivered. “Poor girl! But perhaps the horse won’t fall. At that pace I’m afraid it will kill her to jump.”
Both girls started to run forward, as a turn in the cliff and the trail took the horse and its rider out of sight for a few moments, behind a clump of wind-blown pines and some bushes. But the girls hurried around to where they could see the road again, and they wondered where Dalton might be. “If Dal has gotten to the beach,” said Leslie, “we’ll have to call him to help, in case of a bad accident.”
“It is pretty level after that one place,” Sarita answered, “and perhaps someone at the village will catch—”
But they heard a frightened scream. Now they could see the scene clearly. What was the girl doing? And there stood Dalton at the side of the trail opposite the cliff’s edge. His feet were apart, bracing his body, for his arms were outstretched to catch the girl. There went a flying, falling figure,—and Dalton, under the impact, fell too. What a crash among the bushes!
CHAPTER III
PEGGY IVES
The running girls reached the scene just as Dalton and the girl who had jumped from the horse were picking themselves up and out of some blackberry bushes. Leslie was relieved to see that Dalton was disentangling himself with all his limbs in working order.
“Oh! oh! Didn’t I kill you, falling on you that way? I ought to have known better, but you held up your hands, you know. Say, I could have chosen some bushes that weren’t blackberry bushes, though!”
Somewhat hysterical Leslie thought the young lady, but when she knew her better, she found that this was Peggy Ives’ usual style of conversation.
“Just look a little farther on and you will see why any bushes would do,” said Dalton, pulling a long blackberry branch from her dress and giving her his hand to help her up.
“Say, you are all scratched up, too, and you even had the sense to throw your robe over the bush,—not that it did much good! I’m full of prickles, but I am certainly much obliged!”