was never found.

Terror conquered training in Pie-face. The horse broke and ran, striking diagonally up the rocky slope, struggling upward with the agility of a pine marten.

Even as he struggled, Otis, white-faced and gasping, could picture himself crushed beneath the crashing wall of logs. With a tremendous heave, he threw himself backward for the last time. The handcuffs held.

He swung himself about the tree. It flashed through his mind that its sturdy trunk might protect him to some extent against the shock of the impact. But even if he were not crushed like a bear in a deadfall, he felt that, chained to the tree, he would be drowned beneath the chocolate waters. In a last frantic effort to escape he began awkwardly to climb the tree.

The cold breath of the flood engulfed him. The smashing of the timbers drowned out all other sound. He closed his eyes and clung to the trunk.

Then the flood struck.

 CHAPTER V 

CHAPTER V

“On the level, Miss Lancaster,” Jess Bledsoe was saying as they jogged along the Buffalo Forks road, “Otis Carr is a mighty fine chap. All the boys hereabouts like him. A little retiring, sometimes, and mighty awkward all the time. But he’s pretty level-headed, except once in a while when he lets his temper get away with him. And he knows the cattle business from hoof to ears, and range to stockyards.”

Mariel smiled. “Margaret worships her big brother,” she volunteered. “She used to show me his letters while we were at school together. From what she told me about him, I rather expected to find him a sort of superman. He isn’t at all as I pictured him.”

Jess glanced at her curiously. “You aren’t disappointed, are you?” he asked with just a trace of jealousy in his query.

“Indeed I’m not,” Mariel replied, looking away. “He isn’t a superman by any means. He’s very human.” And then, as an afterthought, she added: “And modest!”

Jess looked at her a trifle suspiciously. “You know,” he said, “there’s grown to be quite a friendly rivalry between Otis and me.” Mariel shot a doubtful and inquiring glance at him. “Each of us wants to be the first to catch the rustlers who have been getting into 

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