Part 40 (2/2)

CHAPTER XXIX

Sheer amazement made Aldous hold his fire in that first moment Marie had said that two men were after MacDonald He had heard three shots nearly athat DeBar was dead That accounted for _three_ He had expected to see only Quade, and FitzHugh, and one other behind the tepee And there were six! He counted them as they came swiftly out from the shelter of the rocks to the level of the plain He was about to fire when he thought of Joanne and Marie They were still behind hiround To fire from where he stood would draw a fusillade of bullets in their direction, and with another warning cry to Joanne, he sped twenty paces to one side so that they would not be within range Not until then did the attacking party see him

At a hundred and fifty yards he had no tih He fired first at a group of three, and one of the three cruh his skull had been crushed fro like a ripping cloth close over his head He dropped to his knees before he fired again, and a bullet clove the air where he had stood The crack of rifles did not hurry hies, and only six, and he aimed deliberately At his second shot the man he had fired at ran forward three or four steps, and then pitched flat on his face For a flash Aldous thought that it was Mortih--and pulled the trigger It was a miss

Twoht to the foreh his chest The nextseeht A red sea rose before his eyes In it he was subed; the roar of it filled his ears; it blinded hi eht hiain His rifle was no longer in his hands, and he was standing Twenty feet awayupon hi A bullet had stunned him, but he was not badly hurt He jerked out his automatic, but before he could raise it, or even fire from his hip, the first of his assailants was upon hiether, and as they struggled on the bare rock Aldous caught for a fraction of a second a scene that burned itself like fire in his brain He saw Mortih with a revolver in his hand He had stopped; he was staring like one looking upon the ghost of the dead, and as he stared there rose above the ru roar of the chasm a wild and terrible shriek fro for his life, but for her, and he fought with the er As he struck, and choked, and beat the head of his assailant on the rock, he heard shriek after shriek coain, and Joanne was struggling in the arled to his knees, and the led to his knees; and then they cae of the chas at Mortih; then her eyes shot to hiht to free herself

For thirty seconds of that terrible drah stood as if hewn out of rock Then he sprang toward the fighters

In the arth of ten onist under his ar hi athered themselves for the final effort he knew that all was lost

Mortih's face leered over his shoulder, his demoniac intention was in his eyes before he acted With a cry of hatred and of triued to the depths below, still holding to his ene scream from Joanne

As the rock slid away froht was that the end had coBut quicker than he dashed through space his ripped at the fact that his one chance lay in the close e to him It seemed to him that they turned over and over a hundred ti foam broke under hi monsters of rock that he and Joanne had looked upon They struck it fairly, and Aldous was uppermost He felt the terrific iain, and they slipped off into the flood

Still Aldous held to his eneer felt the touch of the hands that had choked hiled with hionist was dead The fifty-foot fall, with the rock splitting his back, had killed hiether under the surface, torn and twisted by the whirling eddies and whirlpools It see down, that they were sinking a vast distance

Dully he felt the beat of rocks Then it flashed upon hi He freed hi himself to the surface It seemed an eternity before he rose to the top He opened his s

The next instant a great rock reared like a living thing in his face; he plunged against it, was beaten over it, and again he was going down--down--in that deadly clutch of ain he ca past him with the speed of an express train And now it see hi but rocks

He shot through therew less, and he felt the touch of soht at a rock, and hung to it His eyes cleared a little He ithin ten feet of a shore covered with sand and gravel The water was s with a h it to the shore, and fell down upon his knees, with his face buried in his arrip of the chasered to his feet and looked about him

His face was beaten until he was almost blind His shi+rt had been torn fro He advanced a few steps He raised one arm and then the other He limped One arm hurt him when he moved it, but the bone was sound He was terribly asp of thankfulness fell fro even ht for life between the chasm walls, and as he lay half unconscious on the rock, had he forgotten Joanne His one thought was of her now He had no weapon, but as he stumbled in the direction of the camp in the little plain he picked up a club that lay in his path

That MacDonald was dead, Aldous was certain There would be four against hione to the th returned, and it occurred to hiht come upon Joanne and her captors before the twoold Donald He tried to run Not until then did he fully realize the condition he was in Twice in the first hundred yards his legs doubled under hier, though each tis doubled under hie of the plain, and when he got there it was eh, or of Joanne and Marie; and there was no one co froain, and he found that over the level floor of the valley he couldthe rocks He went to where he had dropped his rifle It was gone He searched for his auto skinning-knife in one of the panniers near the tepee As he went for this, he passed two of the h had taken their weapons, and had turned them over to see if they were alive or dead They were dead He secured the knife, and behind the tepee he passed the third body, its face as still and white as the others He shuddered as he recognized it It was Slione

More swiftly now he made his way into the break out of which his assailants had coain that he had been right, and that Donald MacDonald, in spite of all his years in theTheir enemies had co-place Through it Joanne must have been taken by her captors As hea little th with each step, his mind tried to picture the situation that had now arisen between Quade and Mortih Hoould Quade, as h's claim of ownershi+p? Would he believe his partner? Would he even believe Joanne if, to save herself froh was her husband? Even if he believed theh to stand between hi to sacrifice everything?

As Aldous asked himself these questions his blood ran hot and cold by turns And the answer to theuish fro the rocks There could be but one answer: Quade would fight He would fight like a h had been killed Joanne had already gone utterly and helplessly into his power He believed that FitzHugh had not revealed to Quade his relationshi+p to Joanne while they were on the plain, and the thought still ht not reveal it at all, that he ed upon her knees for hie it would be to see her helpless and broken in the ar beasts----

He could think no farther The sweat broke out on his face as he hobbled faster over a level space The sound of the water between the chasm walls was now a thunder in his ears He could not have heard a rifle-shot or a screa had continually grown narrower It seemed to end a little ahead of hi way after all filled him with dread He came to the face of the mountain wall, and then, to his left, he saw a crack that was no wider than a man's body In it there was sand, and the, sand was beaten by footprints! He wore of the chase of rock spanned the huge cleft through which the strea hiuarded This fact convinced him that MacDonald had been killed, and that his enemies believed he was dead If MacDonald had escaped, and they had feared a possible pursuit, soe

The trail was easy to follo Sand and grassy earth had replaced rock and shale; he could make out the imprints of feet--many of them--and they led in the direction of a piece of ti to the east and west The rurew fainter as he advanced A couple of hundred yards farther on the trail swung to the left again; it took hie rock, and as he appeared from behind this, his knife clutched in his hand, he dropped suddenly flat on his face, and his heart rose like a lump in his throat