mbrace of it he tried to cry out. He fought himself out of it, his eyes
cleared, and he could see again. His rifle was no longer in his hands, and
he was standing. Twenty feet away men were rushing upon him. His brain
recovered itself with the swiftness of lightning. A bullet had stunned him,
but he was not badly hurt. He jerked out his automatic, but before he could
raise it, or even fire from his hip, the first of his assailants was upon
him with a force that drove it from his hand. They went down together, and
as they struggled on the bare rock Aldous caught for a fraction of a second
a scene that burned itself like fire in his brain. He saw Mortimer FitzHugh
with a revolver in his hand. He had stopped; he was staring like one
looking upon the ghost of the dead, and as he stared there rose above the
rumbling roar of the chasm a wild and terrible shriek from Joanne.

Aldous saw no more then. He was not fighting for his life, but for her, and
he fought with the mad ferocity of a tiger. As he struck, and choked, and
beat the head of his assailant on the rock, he heard shriek after shriek
come from Joanne's lips; and then for a flash he saw them again, and
Joanne was struggling in the arms of Quade!

He struggled to his knees, and the man he was fighting struggled to his
knees; and then they came to their feet, locked in a death-grip on the edge
of the chasm. From Quade's clutch he saw Joanne staring at Mortimer
FitzHugh; then her eyes shot to him, and with another shriek she fought to
free herself.

For thirty seconds of that terrible drama Mortimer FitzHugh stood as if
hewn out of rock. Then he sprang toward the fighters.

In the arms of John Aldous was the strength of ten men. He twisted the head
of his antagonist under his arm; he braced his feet--in another moment he
would have flung him bodily into the roaring maelstrom below. Even as his
muscles gathered themselves for the final effort he knew that all was lost.
Mortimer FitzHugh's face leered over his shoulder, his demoniac intention
was in his eyes before he acted. With a cry of hatred and of triumph he
shoved them both over the edge, and as Aldous plunged to the depths below,
still holding to his enemy, he heard a last piercing scream from Joanne.

As the rock slid away from under his feet his first thought was that the
end had come, and that no living creature could live in the roaring
maelstrom of rock and, flood into which he was plunging. But quicker than