ged neither to fence nor
roadside sapling. Inverted in the dim and oblong mirror of the pool he
made out the shoulders and head of a man with a rifle thrust forward.
That up-side-down figure was so ready of poise that only one conclusion
was feasible. The human being who stood so mirrored did not realize
that he was close enough to the water's line to be himself revealed,
but he was watching for another figure to be betrayed by the same
agency. Henderson slid quietly from his saddle and jabbed the mule's
flank with the muzzle of his pistol. At his back was a thicket into
which he melted as his mount splashed into the water, and he held with
his eyes to the inverted shadow. He saw the rifle rise and bark with a
spurt of flame; heard his beast plunge blunderingly on and then caught
an oath of astonished dismay from beyond the pool, as two inverted
shadows stood where there had been one. "Damn me ef I hain't done shot
acrost an empty saddle!"

"Mebby they got him further back," suggested the second voice as Jerry
Henderson crouched in his hiding place. "Mebby Joe tuck up his stand at
ther t'other crossin'."

Jerry Henderson smiled grimly to himself. "That was shaving it pretty
thin," he mused. "After all it was only a shadow that saved me."

As he lay there unmoving, he heard one of his would-be assassins rattle
off through the dry weed stalks after the lunging mule. The second
splashed through the shallow water and passed almost in arm's length,
but to neither did it occur that the intended victim had left the
saddle at just that point. Ten minutes later, with dead silence about
him, Jerry retreated into the woods and spent the night under a ledge
of shielding rock.

He had lived too long in the easy security of cities to pit his
woodcraft against an unknown number of pursuers whose eyes and ears
were more than a match for his own in the dark. Had he known every foot
of the way, night travel would have been safer, but, imperfectly
familiar with the blind trails he meant to move only when he could
gauge his course and pursue it cautiously step by step.

From sunrise to dark on the following day he went at the rate of a
half-mile an hour through thickets that lacerated his face and tore the
skin from his hands and wrists. Often he lay crouched close to the
ground, listening.

He had no food and dared not show his face at any house, and since he
must avoid well-defined paths, he multiplied the distance so that when
h