ed.

There came more shots and shouts. Morgan's heroic friend stumbled, lost
his hold on the shoulder of the man he was trying to save, fell behind
out of sight.

Morgan's poor hope for release from present torture and impending death
now rested in the breaking of the rawhide rope where it had been
weakened by that one desperate slash of the knife. He tried lunging back
against the rope, but the speed of the train was too great; he could not
brace a foot, he could not pause. There were gravel and small boulders
in the ditch here. Morgan feared he would lose his footing and be
dragged to his miserable end.

But onward through the dark he struggled and stumbled, at a pace that
would have taxed an unhampered man to maintain, the strain of the
cutting rope about his body and arms like a band of hot iron. Should a
brakeman appear now on top of the car to which he was tied, Morgan knew
he had little chance of making himself heard through the noise of the
train, spent as he was already, gasping short breaths which he seemed
unable to drive into his burning lungs.

How long could human strength and determination to cling to life endure
this punishment! how long until he must fall and drag, unable to regain
his feet, to be pounded at that cruel rope's end into a mangled,
abhorrent thing!

On, the grind of wheels, the jolt of loose-jointed cars over the
clanking track drowning even the noise of the engine laboring up that
merciful grade; on, staggering and swaying, flung like a pebble on a
cord, shoulder now against the car, feet now flying, half lifted from
the ground, among the stones of the ditch, over the uneven earth, across
gullies, over crossings where there paused no traveler in the black
despair of that night to give him the help for which he perished.

On, the breath that he drew in gasping stridulation like liquid fire in
his throat; on, the calm stars of the unemotional universe above his
head; on, the wind of the wide prairie lands striking his face with
their indefinable sweet scents which even clutching death did not deny
his turbulent senses; on, pain in every nerve; on, joints straining and
starting in their sockets; on, dragged, whipped, lashed from ditch to
ties' end, flung from rocking car to crumbling bank, where jagged rocks
cut his face and freed his blood to streak coldly upon his cheek.

There was no likelihood that the train would stop in many miles--even
now it was gaining speed, the engine over