us, and once more the bullets went questing around the
fugitive. But it was a dying effort. They gained; they drew away; and
then they were only holding the posse even, and then once more, they
fell back gradually toward the pursuit. It was the end, and Barry sat
bolt erect and looked around him; that would be the last of him and the
last scene he should see.

There came the posse, distant but running closer. With every stride
Satan staggered; with every stride his head drooped, and all the lilt
of his running was gone. Ten minutes, five minutes more and the fifteen
would be around him. He looked to the river which thundered there at his
side.

It was the very swiftest portion of all the Asper between Tucker Creek
and Caswell City. Even at that moment, a few hundred yards away, a tall
tree which had been undermined, fell into the stream and dashed the
spray high; yet even that fall was silent in the general roar of the
river. Checked by the body and the branches of the tree for an instant
before it should be torn away from the bank and shot down stream, the
waters boiled and left a comparatively smooth, swift sliding current
beyond the obstruction; and it gave to Barry a chance or a ghost of a
chance:

The central portion of the river bed was chopped with sharp rocks which
tore the stream into white rages of foam; but beyond these rocks, a
little past the middle, the tree like a dam smoothed out the current; it
was still swift but not torn with swirls or cross-currents, and in that
triangle of comparatively still water of which the base was the fallen
tree, the apex lay on a sand bar, jutting a few yards from the bank. And
the forlorn hope of Barry was to swing the stallion a little distance
away from the banks, run him with the last of his ebbing strength
straight for the bank, and try to clear the rocky portion of the river
bed with a long leap that might, by the grace of God, shoot him into
the comparatively protected current. Even then it would be a game only
a tithe won, for the chances were ten to one that before they could
struggle close to the shore, the currents would suck them out toward the
center. They would never reach that shelving bit of sand, but the sharp
rocks of the stream would tear them a moment later like teeth. Yet the
dimmest chance was a good chance now.

He called Satan away from his course, and at the change of direction
the stallion staggered, but went on, turned at another call, and head