Jamie in that moment was behaving much worse. Jamie, finding that he could not turn around, was backing down the Slide, every step threatening to land him in a heap. Mary Hope turned white, her eyes staring up at Lance a little above her. In that instant they both remembered the short turn of the switch-back, and the twelve-foot bank with the scrambling trail down which no horse could walk backwards and keep his legs under him. "Loosen the reins and spur him!" Lance's voice sounded hollow, pent within that rock-walled slit. In the narrow space he was crowding his own horse against the right wall so that he might dismount. Mary Hope leaned obediently forward, the reins hanging loose. "He _always_ backs up when he's scared," she panted, when Jamie paid no attention. Instinctively Lance's hand felt for his rope. On the livery saddle there did happen to be a poor sort of grass-rope riata, cheap and stiff and clumsily coiled, but fortunately with a loop in the end. "Don't lasso Jamie! He always fights a rope. He'll throw himself!" Mary Hope's voice was strained and unnatural. Lance flipped a kink out of the rope. In that narrow space the loop must be a small one; he had one swift, sickening vision of what might happen if the little loop tightened around her neck. "Put up your hands--close to your head," he commanded her. "It's all right. Don't be afraid--it's all right, girl--" He shot the loop straight out and down at her, saw it settle over her head, slip over her elbows, her shoulders. "It's all right--can you get off!" She tried, but the space was too narrow to risk it, with Jamie still going backward in a brainless panic. He would have trampled her beneath him had she done so. "Stay on--but be all ready to jump when he leaves the Slide. Don't be afraid--it's all right. He won't hurt you; he won't hurt you at all." He was edging closer to the horse, holding the rope taut in his right hand, his left ready to catch Jamie by the bridle once he came near enough. His one fear was that the horse might fall before he was out of the gash, and in falling might crush Mary Hope against the rocks. As Lance came on, Jamie backed faster, his haunches dropped, his feet slipping under him. Lance dared not crowd him, dared not reach for the bridle, still more than an arm's length away. So Jamie came out of the Slide backwards, saw with a sudden panic-stricken toss of his head that he had open daylight all around him, whirled short and gave one headlong leap away from the place that had terrified him so. Lance jumped, reaching for Mary Hope as the horse went over the bank. By the length of his hand he missed her, but the rope pulled her free from Jamie, and she fell prone on the trail and lay still. "Are you hurt? Good God! are you hurt?" Lance gathered her in his arms and carried her to where the rock wall made a shady band across the steep slope.