creek's edge the creature
balked and the young man kicked him viciously. Brent was waiting with
bated breath when abruptly from overhead came the clean, sharp bark of
a rifle. Brent's hat went spinning from his head and he felt the light
sting of a grazing wound along his scalp. It seemed to be in the same
instant that he heard Bud's revolver barking its retort towards the
point from which the flash had gleamed. There followed a second report
and the zip of a bullet burying itself in wood, and then he heard Bud
yelling, "Go on!"

Realizing that once across the narrow stream he would be under shelter,
he kicked and belabored his mule to the take-off. There was a downward
plunge, a floundering in the icy water, and then an unsteady sensation
as the beast struck out to swim. The current had taken its effect so
that mule and rider were being carried down channel faster than they
were gaining across, but Brent instinctively turned his head to see
what had become of his guide.

He saw an unbelievable thing. The mountaineer upon whose coolness and
courage he had absolutely relied had not ventured the crossing at all!
He had wheeled after firing and kicked his mount into wild flight,
making for the protection of the turn about which they had come. Twice
before he gained safety the rifle above spat out venomously, but missed
the fleeing target.

Such a confusion seized upon Brent that he never knew how he got across
that creek. Ahead had lain quicksand, above a rifle in the laurel and
in his own entrails an overpowering nausea of betrayed confidence. His
comrade had deserted him--had run away!

Somehow, his own mount had won across and was plodding up to solid
roadway once more and there safe, for the moment at least, he halted
and looked back.

Hoping against hope, Brent waited for five minutes with a clammy sweat
on his forehead, but there was still no sign of a returning Bud
Sellers. Then Brent unwillingly admitted that it was a pure and
unmitigated case of desertion under fire.

"My God," he groaned. "He quit me cold--quit like a dog! He simply
cut and ran!"

With a sickened heart he rode on. His head ached from the near touch
of the assassin's bullet. He was not even watching for a second
ambuscade, and fortunately for him, there was none. But with dulled
observation he passed by a place where, close to the road, a shaft ran
back into an abandoned coal mine and he followed his dejected course
witho