ccasionally he crept around the island to make sure
the Kiowas were not trying to surprise him. Hope began to grow in him as
the night grew old, and this alternated with terror; for he knew that
with the coming of dawn, the redskins would begin an attack.

His mind followed the Ranger on his journey. By this time he must surely
be halfway to Tascosa if he had escaped the Kiowas.... Now he might have
reached the cottonwood clump beyond Big Ford.... Perhaps he might jump
up a camp outfit with horses. If so, that would cut down the time needed
to reach town.

Five o'clock by Ridley's watch! He made another circuit of his little
island, and at the head of it stopped to peer into the lessening
darkness. A log, traveling down the river from some point near its
headwaters in New Mexico, was drifting toward the island. His attention
was arrested by the way it traveled. A log in a stream follows the line
of least resistance. It floats in such a way as to offer the smallest
surface to the force of the current. But this log was going down at a
right angle to the bank instead of parallel to it. Was it being
propelled by the current alone, or by some living power behind it?

Ridley posted himself behind a cottonwood, his repeater ready for
action. In another moment he would know, because if the log was adrift
in the river, it would miss the point of the island and keep on its way.

Straight to the point of land the log came. There it stuck against the
nose of the island. A head followed by a naked body drew itself from
behind the log and climbed across it to the bank above. A second head
and body appeared, a third and a fourth.

Ridley's fear was gone. He had a job to do, and he went at it in a
workmanlike manner. His first shot dropped the brave on the bank. His
second missed, his third went hissing up the river. But the fourth
caught full in the throat one of the Kiowas on the log. The painted
warrior shot headfirst into the water and dropped as though he had been
a stone. Before Arthur could fire again, the passengers astride the dead
tree dived into the stream. Slowly the log swung around and was sucked
into the current. Here and there a feathered head bobbed up. The boy
fired at them from a sense of duty, but he did not flatter himself that
he had scored another hit.

But the immediate danger of being rushed was past. Ridley circled the
island again to make sure that the attack at the head had not been a
feint to cover on