Barger groaned.  He had ceased to yell.  He remained mutely holding up his hands, while the cold abyss crept upward to his waist—­the wet lips swallowing, swallowing in silence.

Van jerked in the rope with one impatient gesture.  He coiled it swiftly, but with nicety.  Then round and round he swung the gaping loop—­and threw with all his strength.

For a second the loop hung snake-like in the air, above the convict’s head.  Then it fell about him, splashed the curdled sand, and was pulled up taut, embracing Barger’s waist.

“Hoist it up under your arms!” called Van.  “Try to move your legs when I pull!”

He wasted no time in attempting to haul the convict out himself.  He led his pony quickly to the edge, took two half hitches of the rope about the pommel of the saddle, then shouted once more to his man.

“Ready, Barger.  Try to kick your feet.”  To the horse he said:  “Now, Suvy, a strong, steady pull.”  And taking the pony’s bit in hand he urged him slowly forward,

It was wonderful, the comprehension in the broncho’s mind.  But the pull was an awful thing.  The rope came taut—­and began to be strained, and Suvy was sweating as he labored.  Out on the end of it, bitten by the loop, that slipped ever tighter about him, the human figure was bent over sharply, between the two contending forces.

He let out one yell, for the pain about his chest—­then made no further sound.  The rawhide rope was like a fiddle-string.  It seemed absurd that an anchor so small, so limber, in the sand, could hold so hard against the horse.  Van urged a greater strain.  He knew that the rope would hold.  He did not know how much the man could bear before something awful might occur.  There was nothing else to do.

It seemed a time interminable.  No one made a sound.  The queer, distorted figure out in the stream could have uttered no sound to save his life.  The silence was beginning to be hideous.

Then an inch of the rope came landward, as the broncho strained upon it.  The anchor had started from its hold.

“Now! now!” said Van, and with quick, skillful urging he caught at the slight advantage.

Like an old, half-buried pile, reluctant to budge from its bed in sand and ooze, the human form was slowly dragged from the place.  No corpse, rudely snatched from its grave, could have been more helplessly inert—­more stretched out of all living semblance to a man.

[Illustration:  No corpse snatched from its grave could have been more helplessly inert.]

Across the firmer sand, and through a lagoon of water, Barger was hurriedly drawn.  The pony was halted when the man was at the bank, and back to the convict Van went running, to loosen the bite of the noose.

Barger lay prostrate on the earth, his eyes dully blinking in the sun.  His feet were bare.  They had slipped from his boots, which were buried beyond in the sand.  His face had taken on a hue of death.  From hair to his ankles he was shockingly emaciated—­a gaunt, wasted figure, motionless as clay.