Jimmy was close at his heels. He had only waited long enough to snatch his rifle from the top of the pack on the burro that had been given into his charge after his own had been lost in the mountain disaster. Jimmy was always thinking they might be attacked by Indians off their reservation or else run across some bad men who liked to play their guns on strangers just to see them dance. For that reason he seldom if ever allowed himself to be caught far away from his repeating Marlin these days. When they had pushed into the patch of cottonwoods they found that Ned was already at work trying to lend the assistance that had been so lustily called for in that childish treble. A figure was in the stream, although just his head and a small portion of his body could be seen. He was stretching out his hands towards Ned in a beseeching manner that at first puzzled Jimmy. "Why, I declare if it ain't a little boy!" he exclaimed; "but what's he doin' out there, I want to know? Why don't he come ashore if the water's too deep. What ails the cub, d'ye think, Jack?" "Don't know--might be quicksand!" snapped the other, as he once more started to hurry forward. Ned was talking with the stranger now, evidently assuring him that there was no further need of anxiety since they had reached the spot. "Can't you budge at all?" they heard him ask. "Not a foot," came the reply; "seems like I mout be jest glued down here for keeps and that's a fact, stranger." "How long have you been caught there?" asked the scout master. "Reckon as it mout be half hour er thereabouts," the boy who was held fast in the iron grip of the treacherous quicksand told him; and so far as Jack could see he did not exhibit any startling signs of fright, for he was a boy of the plains and evidently used to running into trouble as well as perilous traps. "But," Jack broke in with, "you never shouted all that time, or we'd have heard you long before we did?" "Never let out a yip till I ketched that burro speakin'," the boy replied; "what was the use when I didn't think there was a single person inside o' five mile? I jest tried and tried to git out but she hung on all the tighter; and the water kept acreepin' up till it'd been over my mouth in ten minutes more I reckon." "Well, we are going to get you out of that in a hurry, now," Ned told him in a reassuring tone; "Jack, climb up after me, to help pull. Jimmy, you stand by to do anything else that's wanted." Ned, being a born woodsman, had immediately noted the fact that the limb of a tree exactly overhung the spot where the boy had been trapped in the shifting sand. This made his task the easier; but had it been otherwise he would have found some means for accomplishing his ends, even though he had to make a mattress of bushes and branches on which to safely approach the one in deadly peril. Creeping out on that stout limb Ned dropped the noose of his rope down to the boy, who was only some six feet below him.