“Get—­get—­Old Blue out!” she gasped and dropped limply down on the grass, fingering at the rope to remove it from around her body.

“Danged if she ain’t got more heart than I thought she had!” the Ramblin’ Kid said to himself as he lifted the loop from over her head.  “I’m goin’ to,” he said aloud, “if I can—­but—­I’m afraid he’s gone.  I’ll try anyhow—­you lay there an’ rest—­” at the same time remounting his horse.

The sand covered the rump of Old Blue.  The saddle, Parker’s it was, was nearly submerged, only the horn and cantle showing above the slimy mass.  His head, neck and the top of his withers were yet exposed.  He still struggled, wallowing feebly, vainly resisting the downward pull of the sand.  Crouching, as if fascinated by the terrible scene, Carolyn June watched as the Ramblin’ Kid, waiting his opportunity, at the instant the horse in the sand lifted his head deftly flung the rope over his neck.  With a short jerk of the wrist he tightened the noose till it closed snugly about the throat of the broncho.  Again turning Captain Jack away from the bank he urged him slowly forward.  The rope stiffened.  The little stallion bunched himself and desperately strained against the dead weight of Old Blue, multiplied many times by the suction of the sand.  The Ramblin’ Kid leaned far over the neck of Captain Jack to give the horse the advantage of his own weight and looked back, watching the supreme efforts of the mired broncho as he fought to climb out of the sand.  A moment it looked as if the little roan would drag him out.  Slowly he seemed to be raising and moving forward.  There was a sharp snap.  Half-way down its length the lariat parted.  At the weak spot the strain was too great.  Captain Jack plunged forward to his knees, his nose rooting the earth, and the Ramblin’ Kid barely saved himself from pitching over the horse’s head.

“That’s what I was dreadin’—­” he said as he turned and rode back to the edge of the sand.

Carolyn June gazed, wide-eyed, speechless with horror, at the horse in the sand.  When the rope broke, Old Blue, with a groan almost human, sank back and quickly settled down until only his head and part of his neck were exposed to view.  The Ramblin’ Kid looked at the broken rope—­the end fastened around the throat of Old Blue had whipped back and was lying far beyond the cowboy’s reach.  The piece half-hitched to the saddle horn was too short for another throw.  Old Blue was doomed.  Carolyn June saw him sinking gradually, surely, into the sand.  It seemed ages.  His eyes appealed with dumb pathos to the group on the bank.  They could hear his breath coming in harsh, terrible gasps.  The sand seemed to be deliberately torturing him as though it were some hellish thing, alive and of fiendish cunning, that grasped its victim and then paused in his destruction to gloat over his hopeless agony.

The Ramblin’ Kid sat Captain Jack and watched.

“Why did God ever want to make that stuff anyhow!” sprang hoarsely from his lips.  He was torn between blind unreasoning anger at the quicksand and pity for the struggling horse.  Suddenly he jerked the forty-four, always on his saddle, from its holster.  As the gun swung back and then forward there was a crashing report and Old Blue’s head dropped, with a convulsive shudder, limp on the sand.