With a sharp cut of the whip he drove the attached horse down upon the one that was half free, and started the two off at a wild race down the steep _coulee_, into what seemed sheer blackness and immediate disaster.

The light vehicle bounded up and down and from side to side as the wheels caught the successive inequalities of the rude descent, and at every instant it seemed it must surely be overthrown.

Yet the weight of the buggy thrust the pole so strongly forward that it straightened out the free horse by the neck and forced him onward.

In some way, stumbling and bounding and lurching, both horses and vehicle kept upright all the way down the steep descent, a thing which to Franklin later seemed fairly miraculous.

At the very foot of the pitch the black horse fell, the buggy running full upon him as he lay lashing out.