A hand shook me awake. In the faint glow of a flashlight I made out
the face of the co-pilot. "Twenty minutes, Mr. Quinlan."

Wetzel was already on his feet. The co-pilot helped us don the
'chutes, and five minutes before arrival opened the heavy side door. A
rush of wind tore in, but there was no other sound. The jets had
already cut off and the plane was gradually losing altitude in a
shallow dive. As this was not a plane used for parachute troops there
was no wire to hook the 'chute cord to. It meant we would have to pull
our own, but both of us had been thoroughly versed in what to do.

"Get ready," shouted the co-pilot.

I grasped the door frame and waited, my heart pounding in my ears.
Wetzel stood directly behind me, the muzzle-loader in his hand, the
tail of his coonskin cap bouncing in the wind, his eyes narrowed.

"Five," the co-pilot said suddenly. "And a four, and a three, and a
two, and a one--_target_!"

I dived headfirst into blackness. I spun madly earthward, but in the
back of my mind a calm voice counted off the seconds. Then I yanked at
the ring-cord, black folds of nylon rustled above me, I heard a sharp
report like the crack of a giant whip, the straps at my shoulders
yanked painfully, and I was floating gently down toward the
night-shrouded surface of Colorado.

I landed in a meadow, if that was what they called it this far west. I
came down hard but in the way they had told me would prevent injury.
There was no wind to yank me about before I could unship the
parachute, and within seconds I was on my feet and searching for some
sign of Enoch Wetzel.

* * * * *

Unexpectedly a hand struck me lightly on the back. I was jumping aside
and reaching for my gun when the frontiersman's quiet voice reached
me. "You scare mighty easy for an Injun."

I said, "We should be about a mile, two at the most, south of the road
where that Army tank picked you up yesterday afternoon. Let's find
it."

"Aye."

The land was by no means as flat as I had expected. Fortunately most
of it was relatively open, with only scattered clumps of trees and
bushes. There were too many small unexplained night sounds, but none
of these appeared to alarm Wetzel in the slightest, so I managed to
ignore them. Once we flushed a long-eared rabbit, and it was five
minutes before I could get my heart out of my throat.

A barbed-wire fence, the first we had encountered, told me we had
reached