The Man From The Bitter Roots

Kind of a bad place! When he'd been frisking on the edge of eternity.

Uncle Bill waited near a bank of slide rock that extended from the mountain top to a third of the way down the side, after which it went off sheer.

"'Tain't no picnic, crossin' slide rock, but I reckon if I kin make it with a gun and half a sheep on my back you can make it empty-handed. Step easy, and don't start it slippin' or you'll slide to kingdom come. Watch me!"

Sprudell watched with all his eyes. The little old man, who boasted that he weighed only one hundred and thirty with his winter tallow on, skimmed the surface like a water spider, scarcely jarring loose a rock. Sprudell knew that he could never get across like that. Fear would make him heavy-footed if nothing else.

"Hurry up!" the old man shouted impatiently. "We've no time to lose. Dark's goin' to ketch us sure as shootin', and it's blowin' up plumb cold."

Sprudell nerved himself and started, stepping as gingerly as he could; but in spite of his best efforts his feet came down like pile drivers, disturbing rocks each time he moved.

Griswold watched him anxiously, and finally called: "You're makin' more fuss than a cow elk! Step easy er you're goin' to start the whole darn works. Onct it gits to movin', half that bank'll go."

Sprudell was nearly a third of the way across when the shale began to move, slowly at first, with a gentle rattle, then faster. He gave a shout of terror and floundered, panic-stricken, where he stood.

The old man danced in frenzy: "Job in your heels and run like hell!"

But the mass had started, and was moving faster. Sprudell's feet went from under him, and he collapsed in a limp heap. Then he turned over and scrabbled madly with hands and feet for something that would hold. Everything loosened at his touch and joined the sliding bank of shale. He could as easily have stopped his progress down a steep slate roof.

"Oh, Lord! There goes my dude!" Uncle Bill wrung his hands and swore.

Sprudell felt faint, nauseated, and his neck seemed unable to hold his heavy head. He laid his cheek on the cold shale, and, with his arms and legs outstretched like a giant starfish, he weakly slid. His body, moving slower than the mass, acted as a kind of wedge, his head serving as a separator to divide the moving bank. He was conscious, too, of a curious sensation in his spine--a feeling as though some invisible power were pulling backward, backward until it hurt. He wanted to scream, to hear his own voice once more, but his vocal cords would not respond; he could not make a sound.