The screamers were inching closer, hitching themselves forward slowly
on their bottoms.

"I'm going to set up a deadline for you critters," Duncan called out.
"Just two feet farther, up to that rock, and I let you have it."

He'd get all six of them, of course, but the shots would be the signal
for the general rush by all those other animals slinking in the brush.

If he were free, if he were on his feet, possibly he could beat them
off. But pinned as he was, he didn't have a chance. It would be all
over less than a minute after he opened fire. He might, he figured,
last as long as that.

The six inched closer and he raised the rifle.

But they stopped and moved no farther. Their ears lifted just a
little, as if they might be listening, and the grins dropped from
their faces. They squirmed uneasily and assumed a look of guilt and,
like shadows, they were gone, melting away so swiftly that he scarcely
saw them go.

Duncan sat quietly, listening, but he could hear no sound.

Reprieve, he thought. But for how long? Something had scared them off,
but in a while they might be back. He had to get out of here and he
had to make it fast.

If he could find a longer lever, he could move the tree. There was a
branch slanting up from the topside of the fallen tree. It was almost
four inches at the butt and it carried its diameter well.

He slid the knife from his belt and looked at it. Too small, too thin,
he thought, to chisel through a four-inch branch, but it was all he
had. When a man was desperate enough, though, when his very life
depended on it, he would do anything.

He hitched himself along, sliding toward the point where the branch
protruded from the tree. His pinned leg protested with stabs of pain
as his body wrenched it around. He gritted his teeth and pushed
himself closer. Pain slashed through his leg again and he was still
long inches from the branch.

He tried once more, then gave up. He lay panting on the ground.

There was just one thing left.

He'd have to try to hack out a notch in the trunk just above his leg.
No, that would be next to impossible, for he'd be cutting into the
whorled and twisted grain at the base of the supporting fork.

Either that or cut off his foot, and that was even more impossible. A
man would faint before he got the job done.

It was useless, he knew. He could do neither one. There was nothing he
could do.

* * * * *

For the first