alive."

The girl lay blanched but unyielding. She did not dare to hope that the
threat was empty and her single chance lay in parrying for time. Bear
Cat had said he would come back with reinforcements in two hours--if he
won through--but he, too, was facing desperate odds and already they
might have overwhelmed him: he might have failed in his dive from
precipice to tree-top.

Her heart sank into a nausea of terror. No outrage was beyond these
human jackals, but she was bred to iron courage and the warlike blood
in her veins welled up in defiance.

"I've done already give ye my answer," she retorted, forgetting her
ideals of diction. "I don't aim ter alter hit none--damn ye!"

"We aims ter be plumb fa'r an' reasonable," wheedled the voice of the
spokesman with an evil sneer. "Deespite yore contrary muleishness,
we're goin' ter tarry hyar jest precisely five minutes by ther watch
ter afford ye a chanst ter study ther matter over, but don't make no
mistake. We means, in sum an' substance, jest what we says ... most
anythin's liable ter happen ter ye when we goes away."

Blossom's pulses pounded so furiously that her sanity reeled through a
thousand nightmare tortures before she heard the detestable voice once
more drawling, "Wa'al, time's up. Ef ye fo'ces us now, hit's jest plain
suicide--thet's all."

After that, for a while, she remembered nothing save the delusion that
she was drowning--sinking down and still more deeply down through
eternities. Her next definite impression came when she found herself
inside the cave, with her head resting against the muddied knees of a
man who sat cross-legged on the ground. At the mouth of the grotto was
a lantern with its dimming shield turned outward so that, inside, its
light fell in a grotesque effect of ragged formlessness.

As she stirred into returning consciousness, the creature who was
cradling her aching head on his marrow-bones, took down the tin cup
which just then obscured his face.

Blossom recognized Ratler Webb and the breath stopped in her tightened
throat.

The degenerate face was unshaven and bristling. Its blood-shot eyes
smirked at her with the brutalized leer of a satyr. The man bent over a
little and with grimy fingers fondled the hair on her neck and temples.

"Jest tek yore time, sweetheart," he said. "Don't hasten ter rouse
yoreself up. We've got ther night afore us."

As the girl flinched and struggled away from the beast-light of those
pred