l of physical distress; none had ever been so devastating to hope
and spirit. There was not one moment of pleasure, one instant of relief
from the day's beginning to its end. At night they went to sleep on
hastily made beds, cursing at all things in heaven and earth; they
blasphemed with growing savagery all that men hold holy and true; and
degeneracy grew upon them very swiftly. They quarreled over their
tasks, and they hated each other with a hatred only second to that they
bore Darby himself. All three had always been reckless, wicked, brutal
men; but now, particularly in the case of Ray and Chan, the ordeal
brought out and augmented the latent abnormalities that made them
criminals in the beginning, developing those odd quirks in human minds
that make toward perversion and the most fiendish crime.

Jeffery Neilson had almost forgotten the issue of the claim by now. He
had told the truth, those weary weeks before, when he had wished he had
never seen it. His only thought was of his daughter, the captive of a
relentless, merciless man in these far wilds. Never the moon rose or the
sun declined but that he was sick with haunting fear for her. Had she
gone down to her death in the rapids? This was Neilson's fondest wish:
the enfolding oblivion of wild waters would be infinitely better than
the fate Ben had hinted at in his letter. Yet he dared not turn back.
She might yet live, held prisoner in some far-off cave.

At first all three agreed on this point: that they must not turn back
until either Ben was crushed under their heels or they had made sure of
his death. Ray had not forgotten that Ben alone stood between him and
the wealth and power he had always craved. He dreamed, at first, that
the deadly hardships of the journey could be atoned for by years of
luxury and ease. His mind was also haunted with dark conjectures as to
the fate of Beatrice, but jealousy, rather than concern for her, was the
moving impulse.

Neilson knew his young partner now. He saw clearly at last that Ray was
not and had never been a faithful confederate, but indeed a malicious
and bitter enemy, only waiting his chance to overthrow his leader. They
were still partners in their effort to rescue the girl and slay her
abductor; otherwise they were at swords' points. And there would be
something more than plain, swift slaying, now. If Neilson could read
aright, the actual, physical change that had been wrought in Ray's face
foretold no ordinary