“Heard the news?” he called. And then, without waiting for a reply: “Ranger Joe Fyffe was murdered last night. And the Sheriff’s got Otis Carr under arrest!”

 CHAPTER VI 

CHAPTER VI

Otis felt the trunk of the tree tremble and give at the first shock of the flood. Almost instantly the rushing waters overwhelmed him. Their icy grip clutched and tore at his arms and legs as he clung to the trunk. All sight and sound was blotted out by the chocolate flood.

Abruptly he became conscious that he no longer was in an upright position. Still clinging to the tree, he felt himself turning over and over with it. He remembered that the roots had been partly exposed in the creek-bank, and knew that the pine had been uprooted by the flood.

For a mere instant he felt himself above the surface. He gasped for breath. Immediately he was plunged beneath the rushing waters again. He clung to the tree with all his strength. He knew that once his legs were torn from the trunk, he would be hurled about by the torrent until his arms, still pinioned by the handcuffs, would be snapped in a dozen places.

Strangely enough, his terror of the instant before had left him. His brain was remarkably clear. He knew that what little chance for life was left him depended upon his clinging to the tree.

His first impulse had been to struggle. Instinct urged him to release his grip, to strive to break his bonds, to fight his way to the surface. But reason conquered. He gripped the whirling tree with every atom of his strength.

With a jar that racked every bone in his body the tree stopped. For just an instant he felt the swift current tugging at his body again. Then he felt the tree lifted from the water.

He shook the water from his eyes. At first he saw a jumble of rocky walls and green trees and blue sky and chocolate water. Then he realized that he was upside down. He saw that the tree-top had collided with a huge boulder. The force of the water was hurling the trunk, roots uppermost, through the arc of a huge circle. The tree-top, jammed against the boulder, formed the axis of the arc.

It seemed ages before the tree was upended, and crashed down again through the lower half of the arc. Clutching leechlike, upside-down, he had time to note that the tree-top was now but a mass of jagged branches, broken off close to the trunk. But although it 

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