She jumped up and went to the pony. Her rope--she would no more think of
traveling without it than would one of the Sunset punchers--was coiled at
the saddlebow.

Running back to the verge of the bluff she planted her feet on a firm
boulder and dropped the coil into the depths. In a moment it was in the
hands of the man below.

"Over your head and shoulders!" she cried.

"You can never hold me!" he called back, faintly.

"You do as you're told!" she returned, in a severe tone. "I'll hold
you--don't you fear."

She had already looped her end of the rope over the limb of a tree that
stood rooted upon the brink of the bluff. With such a purchase she would
be able to hold all the rope itself would hold.

"Ready!" she called down to him.

"All right! Here I swing!" was the reply.

Leaning over the brink, rather breathless, it must be confessed, the girl
from Sunset Ranch saw him swing out of the top of the tree.

The tree-top was all of seventy feet from its roots. If he slipped now he
would suffer a fall that surely would kill him.

But he was able to help himself. Although he crashed once against the side
of the bluff and set a bushel of gravel rattling down, in a moment he
gained foothold on a ledge. There he stood, wavering until she paid off a
little of the line. Then he dropped down to get his breath.

"Are you safe?" she shouted down to him.

"Sure! I can sit here all night."

"You don't want to, I suppose?" she asked.

"Not so's you'd notice it. I guess I can get down after a fashion."

"Hurt bad?"

"It's my foot, mostly--right foot. I believe it's sprained, or broken.
It's sort of in the way when I move about."

"Your face looks as if that tree had combed it some," commented Helen.

"Never mind," replied the youth. "Beauty's only skin deep, at best. And
I'm not proud."

She could not see him very well, for the sun had dropped so low that down
where he lay the face of the bluff was in shadow.

"Well, what are you going to do? Climb up, or down?"

"I believe getting down would be easier--'specially if you let me use your
rope."

"Sure!"

"But then, there'd be my pony. I couldn't get him with this foot----"

"I'll catch him. My Rose can run down anything on four legs in these
parts," declared the girl, briskly.

"And can you get down here to the foot of this cliff where I'm bound to
land?"

"Yes. I know the way in the dark. Got matches?"

"Yes."

"Then you build some kind of a smud