Roy turned to Beulah, the old familiar cold chill traveling up his spine to the roots of his hair.  “It won’t bear me up.  I’m going down,” he quavered.

“Let me go, then.  I’m lighter,” she said eagerly.

She made the proposal in all good faith, with no thought of reflecting on his courage, but it stung her lover like a slap in the face.

“Hurry with that rope!” Charlton sang across.  “I’m sinking fast.”

“Is there any way for Miss Rutherford to get over to your horse?” asked Roy quickly.

“She can cross the wash two hundred yards below here.  It’s perfectly safe.”

As Roy plunged forward, he gave Beulah orders without turning his head.  “You hear, dear.  Run down and get across.  But go over very carefully.  If you come to a bad place, go back at once.  When you get over tie Charlton’s rope to his saddle-horn and throw him the looped end.  The horse will drag him out.”

The young woman was off on the run before he had half finished.

Once more Roy coiled and threw the rope.  Charlton caught the loop, slipped it over his head, and tightened it under his arms.

“All right.  Pull!” he ordered.

Beaudry had no footing to brace himself.  Already he was ankle-deep in the quicksand.  It flashed across his mind that he could not fight his own way out without abandoning Charlton.  For one panicky moment he was mad to get back to solid ground himself.  The next he was tugging with all the strength of his arms at the rope.

“Keep on the job!” encouraged Charlton.  “You’re pulling my body over a little so that the weight is on new sand.  If Beulah gets here in time, I’ll make it.”

Roy pulled till his muscles ached.  His own feet were sliding slowly from under him.  The water-bubbles that oozed out of the sand were now almost at his high boot-tops.  It was too late to think of retreat.  He must go through whether he wanted to or not.

He cast one look down the dry river-bed.  Beulah was just picking her way across.  She might get over in time to save Charlton, but before they made it back across to him, he would be lost.

He wanted to scream aloud to her his urgent need, to beg her, for Heaven’s sake, to hurry.  The futility of it he knew.  She was already running with the knowledge to wing her feet that a man’s life hung in the balance.  Besides, Charlton was not shrieking his fears out.  He was calling cheerful words of hope across the quaking morass of sand that separated them.  There was no use in making a gibbering idiot of one’s self.  Beaudry clenched his jaws tight on the cries that rose like a thermometer of terror in his throat.

With every ounce of strength that was in him he fought, meanwhile, for the life of the man at the other end of the rope.  Before Beulah reached Charlton, Roy was in deeper than his knees.  He shut his eyes and pulled like a machine.  It seemed an eternity before Charlton called to him to let go the rope.