but hugging his barrier as a safety, missed his footing,
and slipped almost without a sound into this opening. For a moment he
sustained himself holding to tree roots, hearkening to the voices of
those above him.

"Wade--you fool! What did you let him get a-past you for?"

And then Wade's heavier tones, "I didn't. He run back yo' way."

He could hear their footsteps pounding to and fro, their hoarse cries
which finally settled down into a demand for a lantern.

"We can't find Blatch nor do nothing for him, nor git on the track of
Bonbright nor nothin' else, without a lantern. You Jeff, run round to the
still; me and Andy'll go back and fetch pap."

Creed sought cautiously for footing, lost all hold, and began a headlong
descent.

Low limbs thrashed his face and body; again and again his head was dashed
against rocks or tree stems; his forehead was gashed; the blood poured
into his eyes; he rolled and bounded and slid down and down and down the
crevice, and into the ravine, bruised, bleeding, breathless, blinded and
choked by blood and earth and gravel. He was more than half unconscious
when he brought up at last with a rib-smashing thump upon a sapling, and
there he clung like a dazed animal, gasping.

Slowly, as his breath came back to him, and he cleared the blood and dust
from his eyes, Creed became aware of a dim glow coming through the bushes
in one direction. For some time he watched it, making ready to get away
as quickly as possible, since this must be on Blatch Turrentine's land,
and the light came probably from some of Blatch's party searching for
Turrentine himself, or for Creed.

But when he noted that the illumination was steady and stationary, he
began to move hesitatingly in its direction. He had gone probably two or
three hundred feet when he came to a place whence he had an unobstructed
view. The light shone out from the cramped opening of a cave. He went
nearer in a sort of daze. There was nobody to intercept him, Blatch and
the boys, whom he had left on the bluff above, when he so unexpectedly
descended from it, being the only sentinels out. No approach was looked
for from the quarter where he now was, and he found himself, gazing
directly into Blatch Turrentine's blockaded still. He could distinctly
see Jim Cal and the fellow Taylor Stribling moving about within the cave.
They were attending to a run of whiskey. While Bonbright stood
motionless, not yet fully comprehending the sinister colou