"Those smoke-signals did it!" he snorted angrily, lifting his eyes to the slope of the notch wall. "Some one loosened a rock. The skulking coyote! It's a wonder we weren't killed."
Matt saw the stone. It was round, water-worn, and as big as a barrel. Evidently it had caught Clip's machine just as it was all but out of the way. The impact had whirled it around and bent and twisted the wheel.
"Nothing but a repair-shop can ever fix that," said Matt, almost as much disappointed as his chum was. "What'll you do, Clip?"
Clip did not answer. He had seen something up the steep slope that brought a snarl of anger to his lips and sent him clawing and scrambling up the rocks.
Matt ran after him. If there was to be a fight with any of the Dangerfield gang, Matt was determined not to let Clip go into it alone.
The climb was a hard one, but the hard, well-trained muscles of the two boys made record work of it.
Twenty feet up the wall was a shelf. Clip was over the edge of the shelf first, having had the lead of Matt in the start. As Matt crawled over, he saw a roughly dressed man scurrying to get up the wall at the back of the shelf.
Clip jumped for the man, clutched his feet, and pulled him down. A torrent of imprecations, in some unknown tongue, burst from the man's lips. Throwing up his hands, he caught Clip about the throat, and the two rolled over and over, struggling desperately.
They would have gone over the edge of the shelf and rolled and bounded down the wall, had not Matt, quick to note his chum's danger, darted for the fighters to grab and hold them back.