Dick Hilton, who had escaped the Hole only to realize that there was no escape, was waiting to vent the last drop of poison in his heart.... Nor did Jane see, nor did Hilton suspect, that waiting there for him was another stalker, who had followed and lost him, who had turned back, who had seen the travelers up the trail and who waited their approach screened by timber.... Bobby Cole's heart leaped as she saw him run crouching to meet Tom Beck, and her gun leaped to position ... and she waited there in the darkness for the next flash of light ... as men waited below ... as Jane Hunter waited, with her heart racing in despair; as Dick Hilton, gibbering under his breath, waited.... The big brown horse stumbled and Tom Beck cried aloud in fear and pain, cried drunkenly, as his blood drenched the saddle. Twenty yards to the shelter of solid rock ... ten ... five.... And a scarecrow figure leaped from it at them, revealed by a long, green glimmer. "Damn you, Beck! Damn you, you've ruined me; you drove me to this.... Now, take th--" His gun had whipped up even as the gun of the girl they saw behind him whipped up. Neither fired. Down below had come those winking fangs again and Hilton's voice trailed into a rising, rasping gasp as missiles from his compatriots drilled his body. His pistol dropped to the rock. He put his hands to his stomach. "Damn your--" He choked on the word, and as he choked he took one blind step forward, over the brink. As he fell he threw up his hands and sailed downward into the depths, into the coming darkness.... The brown horse had halted, but as Jane Hunter slipped to the ground, holding Beck's sagging body with all her strength, he stepped forward, in behind the rocks: their haven.... "Oh, they got him!" Bobby sobbed. "They got him...." She might have meant Hilton, but if so the pity, the regret in her voice was a mourning of her dead love, not the dead lover; or she might have meant Tom Beck and the tone might have been sympathy for the woman she had come to understand, the woman who had respect for her and who she could respect.... They let Tom's body to the trail. The horse moved off. Hastily Bobby ripped open his shirt.... "Through the hips," she whispered. "Through the hips.... "Look!"--starting up. "He's movin' his foot. It didn't get his spine; it didn't get his spine...." She tore open her shirt and tugged at the undergarment beneath it. She stuffed it into the wound deftly, staying the blood while Jane Hunter, Beck's head in her lap, cried aloud. "Listen!" Bobby knelt beside the other woman, hands on her shoulders, peering into her face.... "You're safe here. They've got 'em cut off from this trail below.... "My horse is fresh. I'm goin' to your ranch for help. He ain't goin' to die, ma'am.... I promise you that.... He ain't goin' to die!" She was gone and Jane Hunter, half faint, clinging to that promise as the last, the only thing in life, lowered her lips to her lover's eyes.