José — page 83: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

76 JOSE. felt his hand seized and saw a youthful face, pale with excitement, bending over him. “For Heaven’s sake, sir, be careful,” said a trem- bling voice; “here, take hold of this limb and give me your other hand.” Green felt the smooth bark of a poplar limb thrust into his hand. He had also recognized Jose’s voice, and was in the act of rising to his feet, when he felt an elastic movement beneath him. “Not that way or you will surely fall,” cried the lad; “seize hold of the limb and my hand—tightly! —press your feet against the ground—now with a jerk—there!” Green was once more upon his feet and involun- tarily glanced at the place where he had _ been lying. That one glance revealed all to him. At his very feet, a yawning abyss extended in both direc- tions between two high ridges of the ground, whose edges were lined with a strange mixture of oak and cotton-wood bushes. Two or three strong limbs were all that had prevented him from falling down the steep sides of the gulch when his horse shied, and had securely borne him up until the moment of his rescue. Green’s second glance was directed toward the lad who had saved his life, of which he had — begun to despair, and when he suddenly saw the young man, deathly pale, flinging his arms up into the air and close his eyes, totter and sink upon the ground, he hastened toward him with a sharp ex- clamation of alarm. “It is only the reaction of his excitement,” he argued within himself, and yet he was strangely alarmed when he knelt down beside the unconscious lad, and in endeavoring to raise the slender form in his arms, the lifeless limbs fell heavily upon the Eomichbooks. co