Helen Morrell had swerved her own mount farther to the south and came to the edge of the caved-in bit of bank with a rush of hoofs that ended in a wild scramble as she bore down upon the Rose pony's bit. She was out of her saddle, and had flung the reins over Rose's head, on the instant. The well-trained pony stood like a rock. The girl, her heart beating tumultuously, crept on hands and knees to the crumbling edge of the bluff. She knew its scarred face well. There were outcropping boulders, gravel pits, ledges of shale, brush clumps and a few ragged trees clinging tenaciously to the water-worn gullies. She expected to see the man crushed and bleeding on some rock below. Perhaps he had rolled clear to the bottom. But as her swift gaze searched the face of the bluff, there was no rock, splotched with red, in her line of vision. Then she saw something in the top of one of the trees, far down. It was the yellow handkerchief which the stranger had worn. It fluttered in the evening breeze like a flag of distress. "E-e-e-_yow!_" cried Helen, making a horn of her hands as she leaned over the edge of the precipice, and uttering the puncher's signal call. "E-e-e-_yow!_" came up a faint reply. She saw the green top of the tree stir. Then a face--scratched and streaked with blood--appeared. "For the love of heaven!" called a thin voice. "Get somebody with a rope. I've got to have some help." "I have a rope right here. Pass it under your arms, and I'll swing you out of that tree-top," replied Helen, promptly. She jumped up and went to the pony. Her rope--she would no more think of traveling without it than would one of the Sunset punchers--was coiled at the saddlebow. Running back to the verge of the bluff she planted her feet on a firm boulder and dropped the coil into the depths. In a moment it was in the hands of the man below. "Over your head and shoulders!" she cried. "You can never hold me!" he called back, faintly. "You do as you're told!" she returned, in a severe tone. "I'll hold you--don't you fear." She had already looped her end of the rope over the limb of a tree that stood rooted upon the brink of the bluff. With such a purchase she would be able to hold all the rope itself would hold. "Ready!" she called down to him. "All right! Here I swing!" was the reply. Leaning over the brink, rather breathless, it must be confessed, the girl from Sunset Ranch saw him swing out of the top of the tree. The tree-top was all of seventy feet from its roots. If he slipped now he would suffer a fall that surely would kill him. But he was able to help himself. Although he crashed once against the side of the bluff and set a bushel of gravel rattling down, in a moment he gained foothold on a ledge. There he stood, wavering until she paid off a little of the line. Then he dropped down to get his breath. "Are you safe?" she shouted down to him. "Sure! I can sit here all night." "You don't want to, I suppose?" she asked.