fe's one aim and intention now to rise from that cool
bed in the river presently and go back to Ascalon, try by sound of voice
those who had subjected him to this torture, separating by that test his
heroic friend from the guilty. The others he intended to kill, man by
man, down to the last unfeeling brute.

The water was not more than two or three inches deep where he lay, but a
little way beyond he could hear it passing with greater volume among the
spiles of the bridge. Fortune had spared him a fall into the deeper
channel, where even a foot of water might have drowned him, strengthless
and fettered as he was. Fate had reserved him for this hour of
vengeance. He turned, wallowing in the shallow water to soak the
rawhide rope, which was already growing soft, the pressure and pain of
it considerably eased on his arms.

He drank, and buried his face in the tepid water, grateful for life,
exulting in the fierce fire that rose in him, triumphing already in the
swift atonement he would call on those wretches to make. Back again to
the ethical standard of those old, hard-riding, hard-drinking,
hard-swearing days on the range, the refinements of his education
submerged, and not one regret for the slip.

Morgan did not realize in that moment of surrender to the primitive
desires which clamored within him how badly he was wrenched and mauled.
He tried the rawhide, swelling his bound arms in the hope that the
slipknot would give a little, but was unable to bring pressure enough on
the rope to ease it in the least.

Eager to begin his harvest of revenge before the men from the Nueces
struck south again over the long trail, Morgan determined to start at
once in search of somebody to free him from his bonds. He could not
return to Ascalon in this shameful plight, his ignominy upon him, an
object of derision. There must be somebody living along the river close
at hand who would cut his bonds and give him a plaster to stick over the
wound he could feel drawing and gaping in his cheek.

When it came to getting to his feet, Morgan learned that his desire had
outgrown his strength. A sickness swept him as he struggled to his
knees; blood burst from his nostrils, the taste of blood was on his
tongue. Dizzy, sick to the core of his heart, sore with a thousand
bruises, shot with a thousand pains which set up with every movement
like the clamor of harassing wolves, he dragged himself on his knees to
the edge of the water, where he lay