"I think that was about as nasty a piece of climbing as I ever had. It would never come about in the regular course of business, you see, because we don't work that way, but I was going down to get that brute, no matter what labor it cost. At last I managed to make my way down to the point where she was lying. There, after studying the position in which she must have fallen, I gained some idea of the manner in which it had come about. Bella was from the ranches, where, you know, an animal is not muscle-bound like your eastern horses, and in trying to scratch her head--where possibly a fly had settled--with her off fore-leg, the calk of her shoe must have caught in the neck-strap of the halter, and of course, she could not get it out. "The poor beast probably stood as long as she could on three legs, but the posture must have been cramped and painful after a few moments and she fell heavily, breaking the rope of the halter as she did so. Then, while lying on the ground, floundering about in an effort to free her foot from the thraldom of the halter-strap, she must have slipped nearer and nearer to the edge and then suddenly gone over, with her hind-foot still fast in the strap. "Since I had got so far, though I did not much relish doing it, I determined to take off the halter, and at least save that out of the wreck. But you can readily see that the halter had been drawn fearfully tight, and I could not get slack enough to unfasten the buckle. At last I gave a hearty wrench, and was just about to be able to slip the prong of the buckle through the hole, when the insecure talus on which I was standing, and on which the animal had been resting, began to slide. Fortunately I am fairly quick on my feet, and in two or three springs I reached a little outjutting terrace. But I had scarcely reached that point of safety when poor Bella went over the edge another seventy-five feet into the chasm. "That made me mad. I had come down a very nasty piece of climbing to get that halter, and I was bound to secure that bit of leather if I had to scramble down the gorge to the very bed of the river itself. So, as soon as I could find a way to start down, I went on and reached the mare, this time resting on a wide ledge where I could disentangle the halter with but very little trouble. "I had gained the object of my quest, I had found out the cause of the accident to the horse, and I had recovered the halter, but in the achievement of these purposes I found myself two hundred feet down the gorge and I knew that it would be a great deal harder to get up that distance than it had been to get down, and even the latter had been no easy matter. Of course, my assistant was up above, and had been watching the proceedings, all the while, so that I knew he would get at me from the top in the course of time.