"He ain't dead yet."
They rocked around the arrowhead grove of trees and saw the bridge before them—one stringer. There had been two stringers and adequate flooring when Racey had seen it last. The snows of the previous winter must have been heavy in the Frying-Pan Mountains.
Molly shivered at the sight of that lone stringer.
"The horse is done, and so are we," she muttered.
"Nothing like that," he told her, cheerfully. "There's one stringer left. Good enough for a squirrel, let alone two white folks."
"I—I couldn't," shuddered Molly.
They had stopped at the bridge head, Racey had dismounted, and she, was looking down into the dark mouth of the cleft with frightened eyes.
"It must be five hundred feet to the bottom," she whispered, her chin wobbling.
"Not more than four hundred," he said, reassuringly. "And that log is a good strong four-foot log, and she's been shaved off with the broadaxe for layin' the flooring so we got a nice smooth path almost two feet wide."
In reality, that smooth path retained not a few of the spikes that had once held the flooring and it was no more than eighteen inches wide. Racey gabbled on regardless. If chatter would do it, he'd get her mind off that four-hundred-foot drop.