ure, Danger and Lance Lorrigan
just ahead, where the Slide was steepest.

Lance pulled up his hired horse, his thoughts coming back with a jerk
from the same disagreeable subject that had engrossed Mary Hope. The
hired horse jumped, tried his best not to sit down, lunged forward to
save himself, found himself held back with a strength that did not
yield an inch, and paused wild-eyed, his hind feet slipping and
scraping the rock.

Jamie in that moment was behaving much worse. Jamie, finding that he
could not turn around, was backing down the Slide, every step
threatening to land him in a heap. Mary Hope turned white, her eyes
staring up at Lance a little above her. In that instant they both
remembered the short turn of the switch-back, and the twelve-foot bank
with the scrambling trail down which no horse could walk backwards and
keep his legs under him.

"Loosen the reins and spur him!" Lance's voice sounded hollow, pent
within that rock-walled slit. In the narrow space he was crowding his
own horse against the right wall so that he might dismount.

Mary Hope leaned obediently forward, the reins hanging loose. "He
_always_ backs up when he's scared," she panted, when Jamie paid no
attention.

Instinctively Lance's hand felt for his rope. On the livery saddle
there did happen to be a poor sort of grass-rope riata, cheap and
stiff and clumsily coiled, but fortunately with a loop in the end.

"Don't lasso Jamie! He always fights a rope. He'll throw himself!"
Mary Hope's voice was strained and unnatural.

Lance flipped a kink out of the rope. In that narrow space the loop
must be a small one; he had one swift, sickening vision of what might
happen if the little loop tightened around her neck. "Put up your
hands--close to your head," he commanded her. "It's all right. Don't
be afraid--it's all right, girl--"

He shot the loop straight out and down at her, saw it settle over her
head, slip over her elbows, her shoulders. "It's all right--can you
get off!"

She tried, but the space was too narrow to risk it, with Jamie still
going backward in a brainless panic. He would have trampled her
beneath him had she done so.

"Stay on--but be all ready to jump when he leaves the Slide. Don't be
afraid--it's all right. He won't hurt you; he won't hurt you at all."
He was edging closer to the horse, holding the rope taut in his right
hand, his left ready to catch Jamie by the bridle once he came near
enough. His one fear wa