e gasped, and he felt her arms tighten about him,
relinquished the hold on her waist and with a mighty effort gripped the
rope with the hand thus freed. Even with two hands it was no mean task
to maintain his hold, for the current slight as it was, swung them down
so the pull was directly against it. The Texan felt the girl's grasp on
his neck weaken. He shouted a word of encouragement, but it fell on deaf
ears, her hands slipped over his shoulders, and at the same instant the
man felt the strain of her weight on his arm as the scarf seemed to cut
into the flesh. The Texan felt himself growing numb. He seemed to be
slipping--slipping--from some great height--slipping slowly down a long,
soft incline. In vain he struggled to check the slow easy descent. He
was slipping faster, now--fairly shooting toward the bottom. Somehow he
didn't seem to care. There were rocks at the bottom--this he knew--but
the knowledge did not worry him. Time enough to worry about that when he
struck--but this smooth, easy slide was pleasant. Crash! There was a
blinding flash of light. Fountains of stars played before his eyes like
fireworks on the Fourth of July. An agonizing pain shot through his
body--and then--oblivion.

A buckskin horse, with two water-soaked boots lashing his flanks and
trailing a lariat rope from the horn of his saddle, dashed madly up a
coulee. The pack string broke and the terrifying thing that lashed him
on, fell to the ground with a thud. The run became a trot, and the trot
a walk. When the coulee widened into a grassy plain, he warily circled
the rope that dragged from the saddle, and deciding it was harmless,
fell eagerly to eating the soggy buffalo grass that carpeted the ground.

While back at the mouth of the coulee lay two unconscious forms, their
bodies partly awash in the lapping waves of the rising river.

CHAPTER X

JANET MCWHORTER

The Texan stirred uneasily. Vaguely, he sensed that something was wrong.
His head ached horribly but he didn't trouble to open his eyes. He was
in the corral lying cramped against the fence where the Red King had
thrown him, and with bared teeth, and forefeet pawing the air, the Red
King was coming toward him. Another moment and those terrible hoofs
would be striking, cutting, trampling him into the trodden dirt of the
corral. Why didn't someone haze him off? Would they sit there on the
fence and see him killed? "Whoa, boy--Whoa!" In vain he struggled to
raise an arm-