LITMIR.BIZ

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They saw a light glimmering through the fog. The ferry itself was just visible, resting on the far bank. A lantern sparkled over there, too. Behind them the desert broke its vigil, pale and frosty.

      "Ferry's acrost. That's bad. Make us wait twenty minutes. Meanwhile we're plumb in a trap. Jim, supposin' some o' them suckers is below waitin' for us?"

      "I'm thinkin' about that item," replied Chaffee.

      "Doggone, it's cold. What to do? It looks spooky to me."

      "I guess we'd better brace it," decided Chaffee. "Can't turn back now." The horses, single file, walked stiff-legged down the grade as the barren wall threw its shadow over them. Halfway, they halted and studied the house, the yard, and the surrounding buildings. Nothing but the light indicated people up and about. If any of the pursuing men were below they could only be hiding in the flimsy barn.

      "It's doggone ticklish," averred Mack. "Why don't that ferry start back?"

      They finally came out upon the narrow beach—the only foothold of any kind for fifteen miles along the river—and advanced to the door, still in the saddle. The door came open and a woman, old and suspicious, peered out. "What you want?"

      "Ferry across."

      "Ferry was stoved again' the far bank yestiday," said the woman. "Old man's over tryin' to cork up the hole now. You'll have to wait till noon, mebbe more."

      This was disaster. Mack's weary face settled. Chaffee never had seen his partner take any piece of news so hard. As for himself, he was very tired, and the swift shuttling of fortune and misfortune during the last forty-eight hours left him somewhat hardened to a bad break such as this.

      "Well, you've got a rowboat, haven't you?"

      "Can't take horses over in a rowboat, mister," said the woman. She looked closely at the pair. "You must want to git away powerful bad. We've had lots of 'em like that. What's your name?"

      "Look up!" cried Mack.

      Chaffee tilted his chin. A line of horsemen tipped over the rim and started downward, headlong and reckless. A shot broke the cold air and rocketed between the towering banks, sounding strange above the unchanging surge of the river. Mack drew his gun and at sight of it the woman screamed and slammed the door. Both partners were out of the saddle and racing toward the rowboat drawn half from the water. "Boost that brute!" snapped Mack. "We'll get acrost, which is plumb more'n they'll do!"

      The rowboat slid into the stream, both men scrambling aboard. Chaffee seated the oars in the rowlocks and pushed the skiff away from the shallow gravel. The swift current gripped the boat in a vise and shot it downward; Chaffee threw his weight full against the oars; they quartered across the grass-green surface.

      The posse was almost down; guns began to wake the echoes. Across on the ferry side old man Lee straightened and ran momentarily out of sight. When he reappeared there was a short barreled shotgun in his fists. He peered through the thin fog, raising the gun uncertainly, not knowing what to expect. Mack Moran yelled at him, but the sound of the water only blurred Mack's meaning. The posse raced to the river's edge and laid a line of fire against the boat, all shots falling short. The woman screamed again and it may have been that Xavier Francois Lonestar Lee heard that scream, though the noise of the canyon might have absorbed so shrill a sound before it reached the man's ears. But at any rate he saw the posse through the fog and he heard them shooting; and he obeyed a natural, primitive impulse. Raising the shotgun he fired point-blank at the nearing boat. The fine shot sang and snapped in the water. Mack yelled again and ducked. "Let 'er go! The crazy loon's reachin' for more shells!"

      The second blast came sleeting across the interval, indescribably vicious as it sheered and spat in the current and whined against the boat's side. Jim Chaffee felt a thin, sharp pain slicing into his shoulder; turning, he saw that Lee was making ready for another aim, and he understood then how impossible the situation had of a sudden become. Buckshot was deadly; he dared not attempt to bluff through it. So he reversed the impulse of the oars and the boat, urged onward by the added force, raced into the dim, droning depths of the canyon.

      Mack Moran's immediate reaction was one of absurd, hilarious satisfaction. "Doggone that Lee person. He'll never get this boat back again. Serves him right." Then he noticed Chaffee's wrist muscles snapping hard against the oars and at that point the full realization of the approaching ordeal smote him squarely in the middle of his shoulder blades. His leathery cheeks tightened; through the gray gloom his face seemed to pucker owlishly, and there appeared to be a withdrawal of blood from his compressed lips. "Man, let's you and me hit for the shore sudden."

      "What shore?"

      "Huh?" Mack looked around, startled. The lower end of that gravel strip upon which Lee's house precariously perched was sliding past them, narrowing swiftly to nothing more than a ledge. Even as he looked that ledge fell away into the river and was absorbed by the sheer face of the canyon wall and there was nothing left but a stubborn, black expanse of pitted rock rising and vanishing beyond the curling mists. The booming fury of water struggling through the farther recesses grew perceptibly louder. Chaffee threw his weight against the oars and the skiff, traveling stern foremost, shot along like a thing alive. Mack protested. "Say, we're goin' thirty miles an hour, or I'm an Australian boomerang thrower. What's the need of all this hustle? Let's slow down some and consider the matter in detail. Me, I don't like to rush."

      "Ain't going as fast as we seem," said Chaffee. "But we might just as well get this over with. It don't do any good to think about Devil's Boil too long. Wonder if that posse is racin' along the rim to reach Linderman's ahead of us?"

      Sight of Lee's ferry long ago had been shut off by the fog wreath. "Last I saw," said Mack, "they was all lined up on the shore, gawpin' at us. Didn't seem to be in no hurry."

      "Reasonable for them to look at it that way," was Chaffee's grim observation. "Better take off your boots and shirt."

      "No, sir, I hate to get my feet wet."

      "Well, here's where we start. Lay down on the bottom, Mack, so I can see the rocks comin' up."

      Mack obeyed. The boat began to pitch, stern rising and slapping into the rollers. Up from the throat of the gorge came the sound as of a high wind beating through a forest, of water pouring mightily over a cliff. Chaffee lifted his oars and let the craft drift of its own momentum. Ahead, the river seemed to slant at an increased angle—another piece of deception moving water holds up to man—and from wall to wall there was nothing but white spearheads flashing dully in the half light. The boat leaped onward and began to turn. Chaffee dipped an oar, almost losing it. He dug in, pulled the boat square with the current, and rested again. The black jaws of a rock yawned beside him, spray lashed out and spattered the prone Mack.

      "Sunk?" yelled Mack, half rising.

      The boat rose and dropped with a force that knocked the puncher flat on his face. They were gripped by warring eddies, pulled and battered and rocked. Chaffee lowered both oars and braked the boat's speed, body weaving, muscles and joints crackling with the immense pressure. Mack lifted his head again and found himsellf canted against one side, staring into a hollow that appeared to be carved from green glass. The boat sprang back; all this was behind them, smooth water lapped against the boards. Chaffee sagged and wiped sweat and spray from his face.

      Mack crawled to the stern seat and rolled a cigarette, trying to speak casually. "Well, guess that was the worst of it, uh?"

      "You know better. We ain't been nowhere yet."

      "Our sunny, light-hearted friend speakin'. Never thought I'd ever get seasick out in the middle of the desert. But I shore squirmed back yonder. Say—look—there's a place we could step ashore. See that shelf?"

      "Yeah. And see what's back of it. A wall, straight up. Would it buy us anything to land? Can't fly out of this hole. And nobody's goin' to row down after us."

      "If I ever get ashore once—" muttered Mack.

      "Do you hear somethin'?"

      The canyon trembled with it—a faint, pulsating snore that sounded like the guttering of some primeval monster; yet the tempo

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