He had only a hundred yards to go—seventy-five—fifty! Thirty! The stampede was not a hundred feet behind him. Another minute, and he would be falling. He tugged once again at the reins, but he might as well have pulled at a stump. Another moan broke from him; he kicked his feet free from the stirrups, gave a mad spring outward, and fell headlong to the ground. His horse made a struggle to stop itself, failed, and went hurtling through space.
Ted scrambled to his feet. Five yards ahead of him was the cañon; ten yards behind him the stampede. He would die by the former!
He ran, ran like the wind, toward the drop.
He never could tell what happened in the next few moments. A horrid din filled his ears. He felt himself falling, and mechanically threw out his hands. He caught something—he knew not what—and hung, suspended between heaven and earth. Some dark shapes seemed to hurtle past his head, overhead, all around him. Terrified, shrill snorts and neighs were all that he could hear, save the queer buzzing that was in his head. But he gripped the support that had saved him, and hung on, half unconsciously, his nerves and sinews strained nigh to breaking point.
Then all was quiet overhead. He looked up, wondering dully that he was still alive, and not, as he had expected to be, a smashed, battered mass, on the rocks five hundred feet below.
Painfully, gaspingly, he drew himself upward. Though he thought he had fallen a long distance before he saved himself, he really had not dropped more than his own length. What he had caught and held was nothing more nor less than a sturdy weed, growing on the extreme edge of the cañon. He pulled himself to earth and safety again. His feet felt solid ground. Then his head swam, his limbs tottered, he reeled, and fell heavily, his arms hanging over the edge, unconscious. The reaction had set in, and he had fainted.
He was found half an hour later by Sheriff Walton, who, partly guided by the sound of the stampede, and partly through knowledge of the country, came close to the figure of the prostrate lad. He set about bringing him back to life, and his efforts were rewarded by seeing Ted's eyes open. The lad stared, and then recollection came back to him, for he shuddered violently, and pointed shakingly to the awful depths below.
"They went over there!" he gasped, "and I nearly did so, too. I don't know what saved me."
"But you are saved," was the reply, "and that's the main thing."
"And about Hobson?" asked the lad, when his brain had sufficiently cleared to think of other things beyond his own awful narrow escape from a double danger.