"Oh, Polly, don't risk your precious life for a burro!" screamed
Barbara, hysterically.
"If Noddy can creep down, I'll save Choko without risk to myself," declared Polly, climbing in the saddle.
"If Polly goes, I go too!" exclaimed Eleanor, turning her burro to follow Noddy.
"Don't you dare! Nolla—think of mother grieving for you, and me left alone in Colorado, helpless!" cried Barbara.
"Now I'm going, anyway! I'd like mother to appreciate me," was Eleanor's unexpected reply, but Anne caught an undaunted look in the girl's eyes.
The combined persuasions of Barbara and Anne had no effect on Eleanor, who, truth to tell, exulted in this daring feat and would not have missed the thrill for anything. But her burro balked at the point where Noddy began the descent.
Noddy was making for a place where the ledge met the downward slope of the mountain-side. The burro felt about for sure footing and then took a step forward. Prodding carefully again, she took the next step, and so on. Sometimes, feeling suspiciously, she would essay a step and as suddenly bring back her hoof before breaking into the pit. Thus taking one assured step after another, she finally reached the beginning of the ledge where Choko had landed.
Upon the mountain-side where the frozen girls and beasts trembled, the wind howled and the blizzard swept along between the trunk of trees, but on the ledge Polly found comparative shelter and only now and then a blast of the gale.
She stopped to beckon to Eleanor and then urged Noddy along the foothold cleft from the cliff. Above, the rock-wall rose to the mountain-top; beneath, Polly could not gauge the depth—it was too dreadful and was now blurred by fine drifts from the blizzard.
After what seemed an age, Polly reached Choko, who still stood obedient to his mistress's command of "Whoa." But he shook and seemed completely broken up with fear and the shock of the fall.