Bonbright pressing close against the rock to pass, stepping warily when it was forward, but hugging his barrier as a safety, missed his footing, and slipped almost without a sound into this opening. For a moment he sustained himself holding to tree roots, hearkening to the voices of those above him. "Wade--you fool! What did you let him get a-past you for?" And then Wade's heavier tones, "I didn't. He run back yo' way." He could hear their footsteps pounding to and fro, their hoarse cries which finally settled down into a demand for a lantern. "We can't find Blatch nor do nothing for him, nor git on the track of Bonbright nor nothin' else, without a lantern. You Jeff, run round to the still; me and Andy'll go back and fetch pap." Creed sought cautiously for footing, lost all hold, and began a headlong descent. Low limbs thrashed his face and body; again and again his head was dashed against rocks or tree stems; his forehead was gashed; the blood poured into his eyes; he rolled and bounded and slid down and down and down the crevice, and into the ravine, bruised, bleeding, breathless, blinded and choked by blood and earth and gravel. He was more than half unconscious when he brought up at last with a rib-smashing thump upon a sapling, and there he clung like a dazed animal, gasping. Slowly, as his breath came back to him, and he cleared the blood and dust from his eyes, Creed became aware of a dim glow coming through the bushes in one direction. For some time he watched it, making ready to get away as quickly as possible, since this must be on Blatch Turrentine's land, and the light came probably from some of Blatch's party searching for Turrentine himself, or for Creed. But when he noted that the illumination was steady and stationary, he began to move hesitatingly in its direction. He had gone probably two or three hundred feet when he came to a place whence he had an unobstructed view. The light shone out from the cramped opening of a cave. He went nearer in a sort of daze. There was nobody to intercept him, Blatch and the boys, whom he had left on the bluff above, when he so unexpectedly descended from it, being the only sentinels out. No approach was looked for from the quarter where he now was, and he found himself, gazing directly into Blatch Turrentine's blockaded still. He could distinctly see Jim Cal and the fellow Taylor Stribling moving about within the cave. They were attending to a run of whiskey. While Bonbright stood motionless, not yet fully comprehending the sinister colour his presence might wear, there was the thud of running footsteps, Jeff Turrentine rounded the boulder on the other side of the cave and called aloud to those within, "Jim Cal! Taylor! Buck! Creed Bonbright's killed Blatch--flung him clean over the bluff--and got plumb away from us! Bring a lantern you-all. We've got to hunt for Blatch in under Foeman's Bluff--I'll show you whar."