n,
and in that instant she saw his lips curve into the familiar cynical
smile. Then he calmly let go the reins and slipped silently beneath
the black water, as the released horse scrambled to the top. Beside
her, Endicott uttered an oath and, tearing at the buttons of his
slicker, dashed the garment to the ground. His coat followed, and
stooping he tore the shoes from his feet and poised on the very edge of
the flood. With a cry she sprang to his side and gripped his arm, but
without a word he shook her roughly away, and as a dark form appeared
momentarily upon the surface of the flood he plunged in.

Alice and Bat watched as the moonlight showed the man swimming with
strong, sure strokes toward the spot where a moment before the dark
form had appeared upon the surface. Then he dived, and the
swift-rushing water purled and gurgled as it closed over the spot where
he had been. Rope in hand, Bat, closely followed by the girl, ran
along the edge of the bank, both straining their eyes for the first
sign of movement upon the surface of the flood. Would he never come
up? The slope up which the horses had scrambled steepened into a
perpendicular cut-bank at no great distance below, and if the current
bore the two men past that point the girl knew instinctively that
rescue would be impossible and they would be swept into the vortex of
the canyon.

There was a cry from Bat, and Alice, struggling to keep up, caught a
blur of motion upon the surface some distance below. A few steps
brought them opposite to the point, where, scarcely thirty feet from
the bank, two forms were struggling violently. Suddenly an arm raised
high, and a doubled fist crashed squarely against the jaw of a white,
upturned face. The half-breed poised an instant and threw his rope.
The wide loop fell true and a moment later Endicott succeeded in
passing it under the arms of the unconscious Texan. Then the rope drew
taut and the halfbreed braced to the pull as the men were forced
shoreward by the current.

With a cry of relief, Alice rushed to the aid of the half-breed, and
grasping the rope, threw her weight into the pull. But her relief was
short-lived, for when the forms in the water touched shore it was to
brush against the side of the cut-bank with tea feet of perpendicular
wall above them. And worse than, that, unhardened to the wear of
water, the bank was caving off in great chunks as the current gnawed at
its base. A section weighing