“I’m not a quitter,” she said. “And I assure you, I have no intention of fainting.” After a moment she added, as though as an afterthought: “Thank you for saving my life!”
The strange girl grinned.
“Don’t mention it! Only I ain’t saved it yet. Reckon both of us have got to look sharp if we want to get out of this jam alive. It ain’t no easy going down this hill, let me tell you! Now then! Ready?”
Bitterly ashamed of her recent weakness, Billie assented. She would have died rather than admit, even to herself, that her head was still whirling and that she was forced to clench her teeth to keep them from chattering.
That descent to the jagged rocks at the base of the cliff was one long nightmare. If it had not been for the help and encouragement of the strange girl, interspersed with occasional merciless taunts from the same source, Billie knew she could never have made it.
As it was, she slipped and half fell, half slid the last fifteen or twenty feet, finally landing amid a shower of pebbles and dirt in a crevasse between two jagged rocks.
“Mercy!” she gasped.
“It is a mercy that you landed betwixt instead of on ’em.”
Billie looked up from her undignified position to find the strange girl grinning down at her. She frowned and tried to rise, but found herself wedged in so tightly that she could scarcely move.
“Like a sardine in a packed can,” remarked the strange girl unkindly.