The Mad King | Page 6

right-hand
fender, the wheels on that side must have been on the very verge of the em- bankment.
Now he was abreast the girl. Just ahead he could see where the road disappeared around a
corner of the bluff at the dangerous curve the girl had warned him against.
Custer leaned far out over the side of his car. The lung- ing of the horse in his stride, and
the swaying of the leaping car carried him first close to the girl and then away again.
With his right hand he held the car between the frantic horse and the edge of the
embankment. His left hand, out- stretched, was almost at the girl's waist. The turn was
just before them.
"Jump!" cried Barney.
The girl fell backward from her mount, turning to grasp Custer's arm as it closed about
her. At the same instant Barney closed the throttle, and threw all the weight of his body
upon the foot brake.
The gray roadster swerved toward the embankment as the hind wheels skidded on the
loose surface gravel. They were at the turn. The horse was just abreast the bumper. There
was one chance in a thousand of making the turn were the running beast out of the way.
There was still a chance if he turned ahead of them. If he did not turn--Barney hated to
think of what must follow.
But it was all over in a second. The horse bolted straight ahead. Barney swerved the
roadster to the turn. It caught the animal full in the side. There was a sickening lurch as
the hind wheels slid over the embankment, and then the man shoved the girl from the
running board to the road, and horse, man and roadster went over into the ravine.
A moment before a tall young man with a reddish-brown beard had stood at the turn of
the road listening intently to the sound of the hurrying hoof beats and the purring of the
racing motor car approaching from the distance. In his eyes lurked the look of the hunted.

For a moment he stood in evident indecision, but just before the runaway horse and the
pursuing machine came into view he slipped over the edge of the road to slink into the
underbrush far down toward the bottom of the ravine.
When Barney pushed the girl from the running board she fell heavily to the road, rolling
over several times, but in an instant she scrambled to her feet, hardly the worse for the
tumble other than a few scratches.
Quickly she ran to the edge of the embankment, a look of immense relief coming to her
soft, brown eyes as she saw her rescuer scrambling up the precipitous side of the ravine
toward her.
"You are not killed?" she cried in German. "It is a miracle!"
"Not even bruised," reassured Barney. "But you? You must have had a nasty fall."
"I am not hurt at all," she replied. "But for you I should be lying dead, or terribly maimed
down there at the bottom of that awful ravine at this very moment. It's awful." She drew
her shoulders upward in a little shudder of horror. "But how did you escape? Even now I
can scarce believe it possible."
"I'm quite sure I don't know how I did escape," said Barney, clambering over the rim of
the road to her side. "That I had nothing to do with it I am positive. It was just luck. I
simply dropped out onto that bush down there."
They were standing side by side, now peering down into the ravine where the car was
visible, bottom side up against a tree, near the base of the declivity. The horse's head
could be seen protruding from beneath the wreckage.
"I'd better go down and put him out of his misery," said Barney, "if he is not already
dead."
"I think he is quite dead," said the girl. "I have not seen him move."
Just then a little puff of smoke arose from the machine, followed by a tongue of yellow
flame. Barney had already started toward the horse.
"Please don't go," begged the girl. "I am sure that he is quite dead, and it wouldn't be safe
for you down there now. The gasoline tank may explode any minute."
Barney stopped.
"Yes, he is dead all right," he said, "but all my belongings are down there. My guns,
six-shooters and all my ammuni- tion. And," he added ruefully, "I've heard so much
about the brigands that infest these mountains."
The girl laughed.

"Those stories are really exaggerated," she said. "I was born in Lutha, and except for a
few months each year have always lived here, and though I ride much I have never seen a
brigand. You