The Camp Fire Girls on the Edge of the Desert

It was curious that the guide had not seen the place where Bettina had fallen.

A few moments after her burro had deserted her, Bettina, hurrying up the incline to join her companions, slipped on a loose stone. Yet this would not have been serious had she given up and allowed herself to go. Instead she stumbled sideways, tried to regain her balance, stumbled a second time, and then, looking down, found herself at the edge of a ravine that had a sheer descent of thirty or more feet. Even now Bettina might have saved herself by dropping down on her knees or flinging herself backward. But the sight of the precipice must have made her dizzy, or else she was too frightened to think. For she went over quietly and without even a cry for help. And afterwards she did not call out. In falling Bettina's head had struck against a jutting rock, so that she lay crumpled up between two walls of stone with a deep crevice between them. Her position was a strange one. She seemed to be sitting in a giant chair, except that one leg was bent beneath her and her head drooped forward on her breast.