anding still. Not on good footing, perhaps, but in this mucky ground
the weight of his horse was terribly against him. He drove the spurs
home again; he looked back again and again, piercing the driving mist of
rain with starting eyes. He was safe still; the destroyer was not in
sight; yet he might be riding close behind that wall of rain.

His horse came to a sudden halt, sliding on all four feet and driving up
a rush of dirty water before him; even then he had stopped barely in
time, for his forefeet were buried to the knees in water. Before Mac
Strann lay a wide arroyo. In ordinary weather it was dry as all the
desert around, but now it had cupped the water from miles around and ran
bank full, a roaring torrent. On its surface the rain beat with a
continual crashing, like axes falling on brittle glass; and the downpour
was now so fearful that Mac Strann, for all his peering, could not look
to the other side.

He judged the current to see if he might swim his horse across. But even
while he stared the stump of a cottonwood went whirling down the stream,
struck a rock, perhaps, on the bottom, flung its entire bulk out of the
water with the impact, and then floundered back into the stream again
and whirled instantly out of sight in the sheeted rain.

No horse in the world could live through such a current. But the arroyo
might turn. He swung his horse and spurred desperately along the bank,
keeping his eye upon the bank. No, the stream cut back in a sharp curve
and headed him farther and farther in the direction of the pursuer. He
brought the mighty horse to another sliding halt and swung about in the
opposite direction, for surely there must lie the point of escape.
Desperately he rode, for the detour had cost him priceless time, yet it
might be made up. Ay, the stream sloped sharply into the direction in
which he wished to ride. For a distance he could not judge, since
seconds were longer than minutes to Mac Strann now.

And then--the edge of the stream curved back again. He thought it must
be a short twist in the line of the arroyo, but following it a little
further he came to realise the truth. The arroyo described a wide curve,
and a sharp one, and to ride down its banks on either side was merely to
throw himself into the arms of Whistling Dan.

Once he struck his fleshy forehead, and then turned with gritting teeth
and galloped back for the point at which he had first arrived. To his
maddened brain it occurred