-it was held fast, and his legs were pinned to the ground
by a weight! He struggled violently, his eyes flew open and--there was
no Red King, no corral--only a grassed slope strewn with rocks against
one of which his head rested. But why was he tied? With great effort he
rolled over. The weight that held his legs shifted, and he found that
one of his arms was free. He sat up and stared, and instantly
recollection of the events of the night, brutally vivid, crowded his
brain. There was no slow, painful tracing step by step, of the
happenings of the past twelve hours. The whole catenation in proper
sequence presented itself in one all-embracing vision--a scene painted
on canvas, rather than the logical continuity of a screen picture.

The unconscious form of the girl lay across his legs. Her temple, and
part of her cheek that lay within range of his vision were white with
the pallor of death, and the hand that stretched upward toward his own,
showed blue and swollen from the effect of the tightly knotted scarf.
Swiftly the man untied the knots, and staggering to his feet, raised the
limp form and half-carried, half-dragged it to a tiny plateau higher up
the slope. Very gently he laid the girl on the grass, loosened her shirt
at the throat, and removed her wet boots. Her hands and feet were ice
cold, and he chafed them vigorously. Gradually, under the rubbing the
sluggish blood flowed. The blue look faded from her hand and a slight
tinge of colour crept into her cheeks. With a sigh of relief, the Texan
grasped her by the shoulder and shook her roughly. After a few moments
her eyelids fluttered slightly, and her lips moved. The shaking
continued, and he bent to catch the muttered words:

"Win----"

"Yeh, Win'll be 'long, directly. Come, wake up!"

"Win--dear--I'm--so--sleepy."

She was asleep again as the words left her lips and the man, squatting
on his heels, nodded approval. "That's what I wanted to know--that she
ain't drowned. If there'd been any water in her lungs she'd have
coughed."

He stood up and surveyed his surroundings. At the water's edge, not a
hundred feet below the spot where the horse had dragged them against the
rocks, the flat-boat lay heavily aground. Relieved of its burden, it had
been caught in the slowly revolving back current that circled the tiny
bay, and had drifted ashore. Removing the scarf from his wrist, he
knotted it into place and descended to the boat where he fished his hat
from th