Her fingers just missed that spur–fell short!
They touched it; they could not curl over it–and grip.
Flattening herself to a green creeper against the rock which seemed spurning her, wildly she stretched every tendril–every sinew.
In vain! Make as long an arm as she could, this daring Pem, her five feet three of slim girlish stature would not become the five feet nine of the daredevil who preceded her!
Emergency balks at extension.
That right arm, racked, fell limply back.
The blue of her eyes, hooking to the spur, if her fingers couldn’t, grew glazed like enamel.
She felt as if she were tumbling backward already, the daring essence of her, to break her too spunky backbone among those glowing pine-dwarfs far beneath.
Spread-eagled against the rock’s cruel breast, she turned a blanched face, a convulsed face, upward!