“It’s Sambo,” was the astonishing reply. “What could Uncle Mose do without Sambo?” He took one more step.
“Mr. MacQueen go—” Bex did not finish for at that instant the thing happened. Something like a pistol shot rang out, the breaking of one cable. For ten terrible seconds, while the man clung to wires and the mule hung trapped in midair, the other cable held. And then, with a sickening swirl, the bridge went crashing down and over until it struck the rocky wall below.
“Come—come on,” Ballard breathed hoarsely. “We got—gotta’ go down.”
Just how they went down that rocky wall, Johnny will never know. Now he found himself hanging by his hands to a ledge feeling with his toes for a foothold, now racing along a shelving bit of rock where a slip meant disaster and now, gripping the root of a gnarled and twisted tree, he fairly threw himself into the waiting arms of an evergreen below.
A short, brief, breath-taking struggle, it was. Bruised and scratched but with no serious injuries, they reached the bottom at last.
To their vast surprise, as they neared the wreck of the bridge, some huge creature reared himself on high, uttered a startling “he-haw-he-haw,” and went clattering away over the dry bed of the ravine.
“It’s Sambo!” Johnny said in an awed whisper.
“You can’t kill a mule,” Ballard muttered. “He should have known that.” He pointed at a crumpled heap of gray on the ground. That heap was Malcomb MacQueen.
With aching heart, the mountain boy bent over him.
“He’s unconscious, but he’s breathing,” he said slowly. “We’ve got to get him out of here. It’s less than a half mile to the end of the run. Then there’s a meadow.”