destruction. There was only one place along its
nine-mile length where he might climb out and the time was already short
in which to reach it.

He had increased his pace to a trot when he came to it, a talus of
broken rock that sloped up steeply for thirty feet to a shelf. A ledge
eleven feet high stood over the shelf and other, lower, ledges set back
from it like climbing steps.

At the foot of the talus he stopped to listen, wondering how close
behind him the water might be. He heard it coming, a sound like the
roaring of a high wind up the canyon, and he scrambled up the talus of
loose rock to the shelf at its top. The shelf was not high enough above
the canyon's floor--he would be killed there--and he followed it fifty
feet around a sharp bend. There it narrowed abruptly, to merge into the
sheer wall of the canyon. Blind alley....

He ran back to the top of the talus where the edge of the ledge, ragged
with projections of rock, was unreachably far above him. As he did so
the roaring was suddenly a crashing, booming thunder and he saw the
water coming.

It swept around the bend at perhaps a hundred miles an hour, stretching
from wall to wall of the canyon, the crest of it seething and slashing
and towering forty sheer feet above the canyon's floor.

A prowler was running in front of it, running for its life and losing.

There was no time to watch. He leaped upward, as high as possible, his
crossbow in his hand. He caught the end of the bow over one of the sharp
projections of rock on the ledge's rim and began to pull himself up,
afraid to hurry lest the rock cut the bowstring in two and drop him
back.

It held and he stood on the ledge, safe, as the prowler flashed up the
talus below.

It darted around the blind-alley shelf and was back a moment later. It
saw that its only chance would be to leap up on the ledge where he stood
and it tried, handicapped by the steep, loose slope it had to jump from.

It failed and fell back. It tried again, hurling itself upward with all
its strength, and its claws caught fleetingly on the rough rock a foot
below the rim. It began to slide back, with no time left it for a third
try.

It looked up at the rim of safety that it had not quite reached and then
on up at him, its eyes bright and cold with the knowledge that it was
going to die and its enemy would watch it.

Schroeder dropped flat on his stomach and reached down, past the massive
black head, to seize the prowle