The Last of the Plainsmen 



before restrained in me, at last ran riot. The slide 

 narrowed at the drop where Frank had jumped, and 

 the stones poured over in a stream. I jumped also, 

 but having a rifle in one hand, failed to hold, and 

 plunged down into the slide again. My feet were 

 held this time, as in a vise. I kept myself upright 

 and waited. Fortunately, the jumble of loose stone 

 slowed and stopped, enabling me to crawl over to 

 one side where there was comparatively good foot 

 ing. Below us, for fifty yards, was a sheet of rough 

 stone, as bare as washed granite well could be. We 

 slid down this in regular schoolboy fashion, and had 

 reached another restricted neck in the fissure, when 

 a sliding crash above warned us that the avalanches 

 had decided to move of their own free will. Only 

 a fraction of a moment had we to find footing along 

 the yellow cliff, when, with a cracking roar, the mass 

 struck the slippery granite. If we had been on that 

 slope, our lives would not have been worth a grain 

 of the dust flying in clouds above us. Huge stones, 

 that had formed the bottom of the slides, shot ahead, 

 and rolling, leaping, whizzed by us with frightful 

 velocity, and the remainder groaned and growled its 

 way down, to thunder over the second fall and die 

 out in a distant rumble. 



The hounds had hung back, and were not easily 

 coaxed down to us. From there on, down to the 



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