alive. I managed to hold her so she missed the wall and made an easy
bump."

Marta smiled in the reaction from terror at his idea of an easy bump,
while he was examining the damage to his person. He got one foot free of
the wreck and that leg was all right. She shared his elation. Then he
found that the other was uninjured, just as she cried in distress:

"But your hand--oh, your hand!"

His left hand hung limp from the wrist, cut, mashed, and bleeding. Its
nerves numbed, he had not as yet felt any pain from the injury. Now he
regarded it in a kind of awakening stare of realization of a deformity
to come.

"Wool-gathering again!" he muttered to himself crossly.

Then, seeing that she had turned white, he thrust the disgusting thing
behind his back and twinged with the movement. The pain was arriving.

"It must be bandaged! I have a handkerchief!" she begged. "I'm not
going to faint or anything like that!"

"Only bruised--and it's the left. I am glad it was not the right," he
replied. Westerling arrived and joined Marta in offers of assistance
just as they heard the prolonged honk of an automobile demanding the
right of way at top speed in the direction of the pass.

"Thank you, but they're coming for me," said Lanstron to Westerling as
he glanced up the road.