So looked they at each other, the horses bounding beneath them, the spring of the world and the spring of their youth astir in their blood, the secret of being trembling in their eyes to the brink of disclosure, as if about to dispel, with one magic word, all the irks and riddles of existence.

The road curved before them, so that the upper reaches of the canyon could be seen, the distant bed of it towering high above their heads.  They were rounding the curve, leaning toward the inside, gazing before them at the swift-growing picture.  There was no sound of warning.  She heard nothing, but even before the horse went down she experienced the feeling that the unison of the two leaping animals was broken.  She turned her head, and so quickly that she saw Comanche fall.  It was not a stumble nor a trip.  He fell as though, abruptly, in midleap, he had died or been struck a stunning blow.

And in that moment she remembered Planchette; it seared her brain as a lightning-flash of all-embracing memory.  Her horse was back on its haunches, the weight of her body on the reins; but her head was turned and her eyes were on the falling Comanche.  He struck the road-bed squarely, with his legs loose and lifeless beneath him.

It all occurred in one of those age-long seconds that embrace an eternity of happening.  There was a slight but perceptible rebound from the impact of Comanche’s body with the earth.  The violence with which he struck forced the air from his great lungs in an audible groan.  His momentum swept him onward and over the edge.  The weight of the rider on his neck turned him over head first as he pitched to the fall.

She was off her horse, she knew not how, and to the edge.  Her lover was out of the saddle and clear of Comanche, though held to the animal by his right foot, which was caught in the stirrup.  The slope was too steep for them to come to a stop.  Earth and small stones, dislodged by their struggles, were rolling down with them and before them in a miniature avalanche.  She stood very quietly, holding one hand against her heart and gazing down.  But while she saw the real happening, in her eyes was also the vision of her father dealing the spectral blow that had smashed Comanche down in mid-leap and sent horse and rider hurtling over the edge.

Beneath horse and man the steep terminated in an up-and-down wall, from the base of which, in turn, a second slope ran down to a second wall.  A third slope terminated in a final wall that based itself on the canyon-bed four hundred feet beneath the point where the girl stood and watched.  She could see Chris vainly kicking his leg to free the foot from the trap of the stirrup.  Comanche fetched up hard against an outputting point of rock.  For a fraction of a second his fall was stopped, and in the slight interval the man managed to grip hold of a young shoot of manzanita.  Lute saw him complete the grip with his other hand.  Then Comanche’s fall began again.  She saw the stirrup-strap draw taut, then her lover’s body and arms.  The manzanita shoot yielded its roots, and horse and man plunged over the edge and out of sight.