Owen Clancy's Run of Luck

OVER THE RIM ROCK.

Honk, h-o-n-k!

“Look out there! Jump—jump!”

High above these sounds there broke a startled yell. Owen Clancy, who was tramping along the road with his coat over his arm, not only heard the yell, but caught one tragic glimpse of a figure soaring through the cloud of dust, dropping in a sprawl on the rocks, and then rolling over the edge of the cliff.

“Great jumping horn toads!” gulped the red-headed chap, coming to an astounded halt, every nerve in a quiver. “Right over the precipice, by thunder! That fellow’s done for, and no mistake. The man behind that steering wheel ought to be pinched! He didn’t give the fellow in the trail any chance at all—just ran him down and made him jump over the edge of the cliff. Now the driver of that car hasn’t the common decency to come back and see how much harm has been done!”

The scene of this reckless automobile driving was a trail leading toward the city of Phoenix, Arizona. It was one of those mountain-and-desert trails which lead for miles over thirsty, sun-scorched plains, and occasionally climb to dizzy heights by narrow, hair-raising spirals clipped from the mountainside.

Clancy, at the high point of the trail, had been crossing a rugged, bowlder-covered uplift. At his left was a blank wall, a hundred feet high; under his feet was a shelf, barely wide enough for the road; and, on his right, was a precipice.

Those heights overlooked a dusty stretch of flat desert, at whose farther edge could be seen the rooftops and spires of Phoenix peeping out of the green treetops. The city, from that distance, presented a most enchanting view, and Clancy had paused to look and to admire.

“Wonder what sort of luck I’m going to have in that town?” he had asked himself. “I’ve got a notion it is going to make or break me. Well,” and he frowned resolutely, “if it breaks me, I’ll make good somewhere else. I’m the head of the family now, and it is up to me to show the folks back East just what sort of a little, red-headed breadwinner I am. I’ll——”

He broke off his reflections abruptly. From behind him, and altogether too close for comfort, came the toot of a motor horn. Accompanying the sound there burst forth the loud run of a motor.

Clancy, always quick to act in an emergency, gave one leap for the blank wall at the trailside, and flattened against it. Not an instant too soon did he accomplish this, for, ere he could draw a full breath, a big, black car lurched past, the mud guards almost brushing his knees.

It was a six-cylinder machine, built to carry seven passengers, but there was only the driver aboard. Lightly ballasted, the huge machine jumped and swayed on that dangerous path in a manner to make the heart jump.

But there was something else that made Clancy’s heart jump. He suddenly became aware of another pedestrian in the road, a fellow he had not seen before.

In the instant of time allowed him for making observation, Clancy saw only that the other foot traveler was a youngish chap, and that he was loitering along unconscious of the speeding car behind him.

The driver of the machine did not slacken gait in the least, but contented himself with merely sounding the horn. Wildly Clancy cried out for the stranger to jump. The stranger, casting one frightened glance over his shoulder, jumped without delay—but in the wrong direction.


Alighting on the edge of the cliff, he fell and rolled—over the edge. The car raced on and vanished behind a shoulder of rock, leaving a cloud of dust to mark its passage. Clancy ran forward, badly shaken by what he firmly believed would turn out to be a tragedy.

The dust was flicked away by the wind, and, as the air cleared, Clancy fell to his knees on the cliff’s edge.

“Hello!” he called, in a voice husky with apprehension.

There was no answer, and the gruesome fears of the red-headed fellow increased. Some of the dust was rolling below the brink of the wall and he could not see clearly. Straining his eyes downward, he shouted again.

This time he was electrified by hearing an answering shout. It came up through the thinning fog of dust and was strong and, apparently, from near at hand. The fellow who had rolled over the edge had not fallen to the bottom of the cliff, after all.

“Where are you?” demanded Clancy.

“I’m where I’m glad to be, but where I wish I wasn’t,” was the rather queer response. “Feller that’s born to be hung or drowned, howsomever, ain’t goin’ to be put out of business by a chug wagon and a bit of up-and-down wall. Pard, do somethin’ for me. I don’t reckon I can do a thing for myself, and the position I’m in is right juberous.”

By then, the dust had entirely cleared away below and a strange spectacle presented itself to the eyes of the lad on the brink.

Ten or fifteen feet down, the steep, smooth wall was broken by a shelf. The shelf was no more than a foot and a half in width, and a stunted bush was growing at its edge. The stranger’s body had met the obstruction in its fall, and was now lying on the shelf, wedged in between the bush and the face of the cliff.

The stranger lay quietly in his perilous berth, half on his back with face upturned. He could not have been more than seventeen or eighteen years of age, and he wore a faded shirt of blue flannel, corduroy trousers, and tight, high-heeled boots.

Those cowboy boots, constructed for riding rather than for walking, had undoubtedly got him into his dangerous predicament. They had given him no firm foothold in alighting from his sudden jump, and he had fallen and rolled from the edge of the cliff.

“Get up on your feet!” called Clancy, “I’ll lower myself as far as I can and try to take your hand and pull you up.”

“Nary, pard,” came the answer. “I reckon as how I’d better imitate a piece of bloomin’ brick-a-braw on a mantel-shelf. If I get to squirmin’, that bit of brush pulls out and lets me down. See how it is? Throw down a rope.”

“I haven’t a rope.”

“Then, by glory, I opine I was born to be busted in fraggyments at the foot of this here clift. Why ever ain’t you got a rope?”

The stranger seemed composed enough, and certainly he took a very peculiar view of the situation. He wasn’t frightened—at least not so Clancy could notice it.

“You’ve got to up end yourself somehow!” declared Clancy. “Straighten yourself upright along the wall and reach as high as you can. Maybe our hands will meet.”

“Bush is givin’ ’way,” was the answer. “I can feel it pullin’ out. One thing I want you should do for me, friend.”

“What’s that?”

“Find out who that cimiroon was that was drivin’ that gas cart; then scalp him, and say you done it for James Montague Fortune, which is me. Adios, pard. That blamed bush can’t stand the strain much longer.”

“Oh, take a brace, can’t you?” Clancy answered sharply. “If you’ve got to drop anyhow, you might as well do it while trying to save yourself. Here, look!”

With his left arm around a bowlder at the cliff’s edge, Clancy, flat on the ground, was reaching his right hand downward.

“See if you can’t get hold of my hand,” he went on. “Do that, Fortune, and I’ll pull you up. Come on, now. You can make it if you try.”

“You’re the most persistenest person I ever seen!” grumbled James Montague Fortune. “You can’t even let a feller fall down a cliff in peace! Well, if you’re set on it, I’ll make a stagger to get up, but I’m a-tellin’ you it’s a powerful small piece o’ standin’ ground I got, and it tips the wrong way and is smooth, like it was greased. Here’s where I caper. Reckon I might as well shoot off into the dizzy void as to go rollin’ down the face of them rocks with a measly handful of chaparral.”

Slowly, and while Clancy held his breath and waited, Fortune began twisting himself into a sitting posture. The bush gave a sudden heave, and its top bent until it was sticking straight out at right angles to the cliff wall. Clancy whooped in an agony of fear. The other looked up at him calmly.

“Told you!” he called. “Couldn’t even hang a persimmum on that clump o’ brush without givin’ it the wiggle-waggles, and here I’m tryin’ to balance a hundred and forty pounds on it. Don’t take no head for ’rithmatec to figger out what’s goin’ to happen. I’m givin’ myself a minute and a half. How much do you give me?”

“I’d like to give you a punch,” howled Clancy, “for wasting time when you haven’t an instant to spare! Get up! Reach for my hand! Quick!”

“Ain’t you the funny whopper, though! Here’s where I get up and fall off.”

With a quick, wiry contortion, Fortune hoisted himself erect and hugged the smooth, steep wall with both arms. A bushel of rock and débris went bounding downward from the shelf, booming and echoing into the depths. The bush went, too, and Fortune, in his absurd boots, was balanced on a slippery foothold, with a gulf below and a glassy wall overhead.

“Darned if I can savvy this!” he murmured. “I’m here yet, ain’t I?”

“Take my hand!” shouted Clancy.

This was something Fortune could not do. One reached down and the other reached up, but a foot gap separated their groping fingers.

“Splice out that arm about a foot, pard,” said Fortune, “and we’ll make it.”

“I’ll do it!” declared Clancy. “Hang on a minute longer!”

He drew back from the edge, hastily unbuckled the belt about his waist, removed it, buckled it once more, and then, clinging tightly to the leather loop, lowered it over the cliff.

The maneuver was successful. Fortune gripped the band of stout leather and Clancy, exerting a surprising amount of strength, dragged the chap below back over the brink and to safety.

“Blamed if you didn’t make it!” exclaimed Fortune, in


 a tone of surprise, as he squatted on the edge of the precipice. “Wouldn’t ’a’ believed it possible nohow. What’s your handle, pard?”

Clancy gave him the “handle,” and the two shook hands.

“Now that you’ve pulled me out o’ that diffukilty,” remarked James Montague Fortune, “what do you opine to do with me, huh?”