that; rocks there--jagged teeth which would tear him to bits when the cruel current hurled him upon them. Even if he escaped this fate, the deafening thunder told him that it would only mean death in another form, beaten and pounded in the fury of the larger fall.
The prospect spurred the puncher to action; he now began to savagely fight the force he had hitherto submitted to, heading for the rock wall, where he hoped to find the current less powerful. It was not long before he realized that his efforts were futile. He was a strong man, his open-air life had endowed him with muscles of steel, but his soggy clothing and the numbing chill of the water werebeginning to tell, and against the terrific thrust of the torrent he was impotent. Fight as he might, he felt himself being forced nearer and nearer to that awful gully of death. Thrashing out with leaden limbs, his hand struck something, and he clutched desperately; it was a submerged needle of rock. With an effort he got his other hand to it and held on, though his arms seemed to be leaving their sockets. Conscious that he must soon let go from sheer exhaustion, he fought his way round to the up-stream side of the rock, and was immediately flattened against it. The pressure was enormous, but the position eased his aching muscles.
'Guess I know now how the meat in a sandwich feels,' he mutttered, and made an heroic attempt to grin. For some moments he clung there, breathless and gasping, while the galloping stream, like a live malignant thing, strove to tear him away. He was now perilously near the danger-spot. Idly he watched the stump of a tree whirl past to vanish in the welter of warring waters, saw it leap into view again, white streaks showing where it had been riven on the rocks, disappear, and emerge once more still further shattered. Sudden knew that it would be spewed out of that deadly maw as splintered fragments. That would be his fate unless . . .
Lifting himself a little in the water, he searched again. Twenty yards distant, at the foot of the dank wall on his left, there appeared to be a small ledge, thinly covered by the stream; if he could reach that he would, at least, be no longer in danger of being swept over the fall. He decided to take the risk, and in a moment was again at the mercy of the current. This, fortunately, carried him straight to the spot, and a lucky snatch kept him from going past it. The struggle to climb up took his last ounce of strength.
Slimy and water-swept, the ledge was heaven itself after the incessant battle with the river, and for a long time
Sudden lay there like a log, conscious only of one fact--the necessity for violent exertion had, for the time, passed. Spent both in body and mind, he was satisfied with the present, and the point that his prospect of escaping was as minute as ever did not trouble him. Lying full length on the ledge, his eyes closed, the greedy stream clawing feebly at his wracked body, he was content to rest. A flick of something across his face aroused him : he sat up, and for a moment fancied that a snake had fallen from the cliff above. Then he saw a dangling rope with a noose at the end. A slight bulge in the rock-face prevented him from seeing the rim from which it had been dropped.
'Somebody's invitin' me to hang myself,' he reflected.
Climbing cautiously to his feet, he adjusted the loop under his armpits and shook the rope. In a few moments he was dragged sprawling over the edge of the chasm. At the other end of the taut rope was his own horse, Nigger, and looking down upon him was Yago, whose anxious countenance split into a broad grin when he saw his foreman stand up and throw off the loop.
'This yer passion for bathin' is likely to be yore finish one o' these days,' he remarked.
'Yu ol' fool,' Sudden smiled. 'How in hell did yu find me?'
'Just luck,' Bill said offhandedly. 'Ran into Cal, who said he'd seen yu, an' come across Nigger, with the reins hitched round the saddle-horn. Knowed yu wouldn't leave him thataway, so I scouted round some an' found a place where it looked like yu'd took a high dive. Then I come down-stream hopin' to find yore remainders.'
'It musta' been a disappointment for yu,' the foreman said gravely.
'Shucks, yu know what I mean,' Yago replied hastily.
A listening stranger would have deemed one man ungrateful and the other indifferent, but they understood one another, these two. Sudden knew that his friend had purposely followed him in case of danger, and Bill was well aware that the foreman would give his life for him if occasion demanded, but, for untold gold, neither of them would have admitted this.
When the rescued man's clothes had dried somewhat and he had smoked several much-needed cigarettes, they rode along to the end of the Sluice and viewed the fall. With all his nerve, the foreman could not repress a slight shudder as he looked at the narrow gut, with its twisting, tearing, racing torrent of water, fighting its way through to pitch, a sheer forty feet, into a tossing, tormented smother of spume and spray. The rolling roar of the river made speech impossible and it was not until they were some distance away that yago heard the whole of the story. His expressed intentions regarding the unknown assailant were definite and lurid. The foreman listened with a quizzical expression.
'There was once a lady who wrote a piece 'bout cookin' a hare,' he remarked. 'It started off with, `First catch yore hare.' '
'Aw, go to hell,' was Bill's inelegant rejoinder.
HAVING, as he believed, successfully disposed of the rider, Riley turned his attention to the man's mount, patiently awaiting his master's return. Reluctantly he knotted the reins and flung them over the saddle-horn; the animal might return to the C P, but being almost a stranger there, it was more likely to drift around.
'An' mebbe I'll `find' yu later,' the Circle B man muttered. 'Just now it wouldn't be noways safe.'
With a flick of his quirt he started the horse off, mounted his own beast, and set out for the ranch on Battle Butte. He found King Burdette in the living-room, and chuckled inwardly when his entry was received with a black look; his news would soon change all that, and he meant to make the most of it.
'What the blazes do yu want?' came the surly question.
The visitor seated himself on the side of the table, rolled a smoke, and swung a nonchalant leg. He still bore the mark of King's fist on his face, but he was a different man. Burdette sensed the change and watched him narrowly.
'I got news,' Riley began. 'They'll be needin' a new foreman at the C P.'
King straightened up with a jerk. 'How come?' he asked. 'Has Green gone?'
'Yu could put it that way,' Riley said. 'He slipped into the Sluice s'mornin'.'
'Slipped--into--the Sluice?' the other repeated. 'What in the nation was he doin' there?'
'Just lookin'--seemed to be admirin' it,' Riley said casually. 'Reckon he turned dizzy, or fancied a bath mebbe.'
King's cruel lips curled contemptuously. 'Oh, yeah,' he said. 'Who told yu this fine yarn?'
'No one didn't tell me--I saw it,' the rider retorted.
King Burdette laughed; he knew the Sluice, and he guessed what had happened, but he wanted to be sure. 'Mebbe he can swim,' he suggested.
'Carryin' too much weight,' Riley said meaningly. 'Slugs don't help a swimmer none whatever.'
'Better 'a' left it to the river,' King commented. 'If he's found with lead in him . . .'
'Ever seen them teeth in the gut?' the other asked sneeringly. 'Bah! there won't be enough of him to put a cross over.'
King nodded. 'That's so. Well, yu done a day's work, Riley, an' I ain't forgettin' it. Whitey'
'Was to have had five hundred. I want more'n that.'
It was a guess, but a good one, and the other man did not trouble to deny it.
'Shoot,' he said.
The cowboy was in no hurry. 'I've got hep to suthin' big--too big for me to tackle alone, which is why I'm talkin',' he said, after a pause. 'But first, I want yore honest-to-Gawd promise that I share equally with yu, Mart an' Sim. What's the word?'
King did not reply at once; Riley's air of repressed excitement evidenced tidings of importance, and though he could lose nothing by agreeing to the proposal, he was far too astute to do so immediately; after all, the man was only a tool, and must be kept in his place. At the same time, he was curious.
'That goes with me, Riley, an' I can speak for my brothers,' he said at last. 'Spill the beans.'
Whereupon the rider told of the conversation he had overhead between California and the C P foreman, speaking in a low, husky voice which positively shook when he attempted to describe the nugget the prospector had
