For the merest splinter of a second, Chick was in a confusion of mentality that took no note of anything. Then, before he could realize that he was plunging to a horrible death, there was an agonizing tug at his right wrist, and he thought his hand had been taken off by some kind of saw-edged knife.
“Ugh!” he ejaculated involuntarily.
Something swept past his eyes, and just as he knew that it was the body of his foe plunging downward into the valley, he also understood that he was hanging by one arm over the awful depths!
His hand had caught in a crevice in the rock, and though his wrist was bleeding and the rough edges of the stone seemed to be cutting him to the bone, still he was hanging in comparative safety.
“Bad enough; but it might have been worse,” he muttered philosophically.
Even if he could not get up to the ledge, at least he had not yet dived to certain death on the bowlders and ridges that floored the cañon.
“Hold on, Chick!” shouted Nick Carter, at the top of his voice. “We are coming!”
Chick did not hear what his chief had said, but he knew that he must have been seen by his friends below. The only question was whether he could bear the pain and hang on where he was till they got to him.
For three minutes, which seemed to Chick like three hours, he hung there, with the edge of the rock digging deeper into his flesh, and his heart skipping beats oftener and oftener as his strength seemed to be leaving him.
“I’ll lose my senses soon,” he thought. “I can feel myself going. Well, the sooner the better!”