etween the two contending forces.

He let out one yell, for the pain about his chest--then made no further
sound. The rawhide rope was like a fiddle-string. It seemed absurd
that an anchor so small, so limber, in the sand, could hold so hard
against the horse. Van urged a greater strain. He knew that the rope
would hold. He did not know how much the man could bear before
something awful might occur. There was nothing else to do.

It seemed a time interminable. No one made a sound. The queer,
distorted figure out in the stream could have uttered no sound to save
his life. The silence was beginning to be hideous.

Then an inch of the rope came landward, as the broncho strained upon
it. The anchor had started from its hold.

"Now! now!" said Van, and with quick, skillful urging he caught at the
slight advantage.

Like an old, half-buried pile, reluctant to budge from its bed in sand
and ooze, the human form was slowly dragged from the place. No corpse,
rudely snatched from its grave, could have been more helplessly
inert--more stretched out of all living semblance to a man.

[Illustration: No corpse snatched from its grave could have been more
helplessly inert.]

Across the firmer sand, and through a lagoon of water, Barger was
hurriedly drawn. The pony was halted when the man was at the bank, and
back to the convict Van went running, to loosen the bite of the noose.

Barger lay prostrate on the earth, his eyes dully blinking in the sun.
His feet were bare. They had slipped from his boots, which were buried
beyond in the sand. His face had taken on a hue of death. From hair
to his ankles he was shockingly emaciated--a gaunt, wasted figure,
motionless as clay.

Van fetched a pint of water in his hat. He sprinkled it roughly in the
convict's face, and, propping up his head, helped him to take a drink.

Barger could not lift a hand, or utter a word. Van recoiled the rope,
secured it on the saddle, then sat down to await the man's recovery.
It was slow. Barger's speech was the first returning function. It was
faint, and weak, and blasphemous.

"It's hell," he said, "when God Almighty turns agin a man. Ain't the
sheriff's enough--_without a thing like that_?" His thumb made a
gesture towards the river, which he cursed abominably--cursing it for a
trap, a seeming benefit, here in the desert, ready to eat a man alive.

Van made no reply. He rather felt the man was justified--at least in
some op