A pair of thick hands appeared and scooped away more of the dirt and gravel that had buried Pitt’s head and torso. Pitt’s arms finally broke free, and he helped push the small mountain of dirt away from his body. Reaching up with his sleeve, he wiped away the matted blood and dust from his eyes and finally took a look at his surroundings. With the seat belt tugging uncomfortably across his chest, he finally realized that he was the one upside down, not the dachshund. The helping pair of hands reached in and found the release button on the seat belt, dropping Pitt to the ceiling of the car. Pitt shuffled toward the driver’s-side window, but the hands yanked him toward the open passenger door.

“You don’t want to go that way, mister. The first step is a doozy.”

Pitt heeded the voice and crawled toward the passenger door, where he was helped out and onto his feet. The pounding in his head eased as he stood upright, but a light trickle of blood still rolled down his cheek. Looking at the damaged car, he shook his head at the good fortune that had saved him.

The sliding mass of rock and gravel that had battered the car and flipped it on its roof had also pushed it across the road, to the very edge of the steep chasm that fell to the river below. The car would have easily gone over the edge, taking Pitt to his death, but for a firmly cemented mileage signpost. The slim metal post caught the car just behind the front fender, pinning it to the edge of the road, as tons of loose rock plunged down the hill around both ends of the car. The road itself was buried under a mound of dirt and rocks for a stretch of fifty yards.

“Must be some clean living that kept you from going over the edge,” Pitt heard his rescuer say.

He turned to face a robust older man with white hair and beard who stood gazing at Pitt through a pair of jovial gray eyes.

“It wasn’t clean living that saved me, I can assure you,” Pitt replied. “ Thank you for pulling me out. I would have suffocated in there if you hadn’t dug your way in.”

“Don’t mention it. Why don’t you come on back to the RV and let me patch you up,” the man said, pointing to a motor home parked on unblemished asphalt a few yards away. It was the same motor home that Pitt had passed earlier on the road.