“De cinch—­she bus’!” cried the half-breed excitedly.  “Dat dam’ Purdy cut de cinch an’ A’m trade Tex mine for ride de outlaw, an’ we trade back. Voila!” As the man talked, he jerked the coiled rope from his saddle and rushed to the edge.  Alice, too, crowded to the bank, her hands tight clenched as she saw the man, the saddle gone from under him, clinging desperately to the bridle reins, his body awash in the black waters.  Saw also that his weight on the horse’s head was causing the animal to quit the straight climb and to plunge and turn erratically.  It was evident that both horse and rider must be hurled into the flood.  The fury of the storm had passed.  The rumble of thunder was distant now.  The flashes of lightning came at greater intervals, and with a pale glow instead of the dazzling brilliance of the nearer flashes.  Through a great rift in the cloud-bank the moon showed, calm and serene above the mad rush of black waters.

For a single instant Alice gazed into the up-turned face of the Texan, and in that instant she saw his lips curve into the familiar cynical smile.  Then he calmly let go the reins and slipped silently beneath the black water, as the released horse scrambled to the top.  Beside her, Endicott uttered an oath and, tearing at the buttons of his slicker, dashed the garment to the ground.  His coat followed, and stooping he tore the shoes from his feet and poised on the very edge of the flood.  With a cry she sprang to his side and gripped his arm, but without a word he shook her roughly away, and as a dark form appeared momentarily upon the surface of the flood he plunged in.

Alice and Bat watched as the moonlight showed the man swimming with strong, sure strokes toward the spot where a moment before the dark form had appeared upon the surface.  Then he dived, and the swift-rushing water purled and gurgled as it closed over the spot where he had been.  Rope in hand, Bat, closely followed by the girl, ran along the edge of the bank, both straining their eyes for the first sign of movement upon the surface of the flood.  Would he never come up?  The slope up which the horses had scrambled steepened into a perpendicular cut-bank at no great distance below, and if the current bore the two men past that point the girl knew instinctively that rescue would be impossible and they would be swept into the vortex of the canyon.

There was a cry from Bat, and Alice, struggling to keep up, caught a blur of motion upon the surface some distance below.  A few steps brought them opposite to the point, where, scarcely thirty feet from the bank, two forms were struggling violently.  Suddenly an arm raised high, and a doubled fist crashed squarely against the jaw of a white, upturned face.  The half-breed poised an instant and threw his rope.  The wide loop fell true and a moment later Endicott succeeded in passing it under the arms of the unconscious Texan.  Then the rope drew taut and the halfbreed braced to the pull as the men were forced shoreward by the current.