While he was avoiding the fissures, and carefully picking his way around the curve, a savage growl broke suddenly on his ears. With racing pulses, he lifted his eyes and saw a huge dog crouching in the path before him.
The dog was a Great Dane, big enough and seemingly savage enough for a bear. While Matt stared, and wondered how and why the dog happened to be there, a man in a blue shirt, sombrero, and with trousers tucked in his boot-tops, emerged suddenly from behind a shoulder of rock. He carried a club, and a look of intense satisfaction crossed his face as he came in sight of Matt.
"Take him, Bolivar!" yelled the man, and Motor Matt was brought suddenly face to face with unexpected peril.
With a vicious snarl, the dog lifted his great body into the air and plunged toward the Comet. Matt had come to a quick stop, disengaging his right foot from the toe-clip and bracing the motor-cycle upright. He had time for no more than to throw his left arm over his face, when the dog struck him.
The impact of the brute's body was terrific. Matt went down, with the motor-cycle on top of him, head and shoulders over the brink of the precipice.
[CHAPTER IX.]
A RUSE THAT WON.
Of course, the smoke-signals, passed along by Dangerfield's chain of guards, were responsible for Matt's predicament. The man and the dog were at that difficult place in the trail to capture the governor's courier, and just at that moment it looked as though they had succeeded.
Unarmed as he was, what could Motor Matt accomplish against the ruffian and the dog? This problem rushed through the boy's brain as he lay at the edge of the trail.