at him. He took off her
belt and strapped her arms behind her back. Then, despite his wounded
wrist, he lifted her easily enough and strode with her out of the door,
Hahn following.

Hahn's horse was standing there obediently with pendent reins anchoring
it! Blaze and Plimsoll's black were nipping grass in the little corral
where they had been placed. Blaze whinnied at the sight, or the scent,
of his mistress. Plimsoll passed the corral and went through a grove of
quaking asps close to the wall of the side-gulch, keeping to the rock as
much as possible. He turned into a cleft, stopping at a rock whose
almost flat surface was level with his feet, a great mass of granite
that some freak of weathering or convulsion of earthquake had split
almost in half. Into the crevice a wild grape-vine had twined, and died.

"Can you make it, Hahn?" he asked.

The dealer nodded and knelt, using his sound arm to aid himself by the
tough fibers, bracing with his knees. Down some ten feet in the crack he
looked up, his ghastly face pallid in the shadow, with an attempt at a
grin.

"Good-by, Plim," he said. "Good luck! What do I do with the girl?"

"Keep her from calling out. She's gagged but she might try it. Make her
nurse you. Do anything you damn please with her!"

Hahn dropped out of sight. Plimsoll did not wait but picked Molly up
from where he had deposited her, a helpless bundle, on the rock.

"The bottom's soft down there," he said. "Sand. It ain't more than
fifteen feet. Down you go, you hellcat! They'll have a fine time
locating you. And you've got a dying man for company. He'll be a dead
one before morning."

He lowered her, feet down, released her and watched her disappear. He
swung about and ran back to the corral, his hurt arm throbbing with his
exertion. He had entertained a brief thought of hiding in the cave
himself, but the fear of madness from the bite had not left him, the
suggestion of it coming on in an underground cavern sickened him with
horror. He craved the open. He flung himself into the saddle of the
black horse, once leader of a slick-ear herd of wild mustangs,
magnificent for speed and symmetry, worthy a better master, and galloped
out of the corral, out of the side-ravine, into the open park. The rough
towel about his arm was becoming soaked. Every jump of the black horse
seemed to increase the bleeding. The spurt of fictitious energy that had
carried him through since the arrival of Cookie was dying