n she did not merely drop,
but jumped, landing fair upon the waiting figure, striking with her
boots on Mad Ruth's ample shoulders. A scream of rage from Ruth, a
little, strangling cry from Judith, and the two fell together. Ruth
clutched as she went down and a hand closed over the girl's ankle.
Judith rolled, struck again with the free boot, twisted sharply and
felt the grip torn loose from her ankle. She was free.

She jumped up and ran and knew that Ruth was running just behind her,
screaming terribly. Judith fell, and her heart grew sick within her.
But again she was up just as Ruth's hand clutched at her skirt,
clutched and was torn away as Judith ran on. Quinnion cursed from
above as she had not yet heard him curse. Ruth reviled both her and
Quinnion for having let her go.

Judith was running swiftly and felt that she could get the better of
the heavier, older woman in a race of this sort. She stumbled and
fell, and fear again gripped her; it seemed so long before she could
rise and clamber over a fallen log and race on. But the darkness which
tricked her protected her at the same time, playing no favorites now.
Ruth, too, had fallen; Ruth, too, was frenzied at the brief delay.

Stumbling, falling, rising, staggering back from a tree into which she
had run full tilt, bruised and torn, the girl ran on. At every free
step hope shot upward in her heart; at every fall she grew sick with
dread.

The canon broadened rapidly, the ground underfoot grew less broken and
littered with boulders and logs. Through tangles of brush she went
blindly, throwing herself forward, falling, rising, falling, rising
again. It was a nightmare of a race, with Ruth always just there,
almost at her heels. She turned as far away from the stream as she
could, keeping under the cliffs where there was less brush; where the
way was more open; where the shadows were thickest.

She was outdistancing Mad Ruth. Ruth's weird voice came from a greater
distance; the woman was ten, maybe twenty, feet behind her.

The moon at last rose pale gold above the eastern ridge. And now
Judith could thank God for it. For the canon had widened more and
more, the banks of the river were studded with big trees, there were
wide open spaces between them through which she shot like a frightened
deer, turning this way and that, darting about a clump of little firs,
plunging into the shadows under great sky-seeking cedars, running as
she had never ru