THE dark hours of that January night saw the two brothers riding hard up into the mountains toward that tiny cleft in the peaks above East Caney where Lance now remembered the cave that he had once said should shelter him in case he ever killed a man. Sylvane had much of Lance's pride and courage, with little of his dash and perversity. Had the peril been his own, one might have guessed that he would meet it with the gentle stoicism old Kimbro showed. But that Buddy should be in peril, fleeing for his life! The boy's universe reeled around him, confusion reigned where he should have been efficient and orderly; and when they stopped at the cabin in the Gap for supplies, what with the agony of Lance's burn and the disarray of his brother's whole mentality, they made sad work of it. Something to eat, something to keep warm with, something to dress the hurt--these were the things the boy tried to remember, and forgot, and could not find, when he fancied the galloping hoofs of pursuers with every gust that shook the big trees in the dooryard. He got for the dressing of the arm only a roll [341] of new cloth, rough and unsuitable; while a few extra garments, a blanket, meat, meal, salt, a cooking vessel and some white beans made up the rest of his packet. He came out at the last carrying Lance's banjo and put it on top of the supplies. "'Way up yon they'll be nobody to hear you, and I reckon it might take off the edge of the lonesomeness," he half apologized when Lance looked curiously at it in the light of the lantern his brother held. The owner of the banjo made no movement to take it and swing it upon his back, neither did he decline it; but indifferently Sylvane was allowed to bring the once cherished possession along. Through the cold, naked woods, they pushed to East Caney. The creek was up. It was three o'clock, nearly four hours before the wintry dawn might be expected; yet a late moon had risen sufficiently to show them the swollen torrent. These mountain streams, fed by the snows of the higher ranges, clear, cold, boulder checked and fretted, sometimes rise in a night to a fury of destruction, scouring away whole areas from one bank or another. To-night Caney, great with the snows from both of the twin peaks above it which a January thaw had sent down, made traveling in its bed a matter of life and death. Yet the boys must attempt it. Once [342] behind that barrier of roaring water, Lance would be safe. True, mountain streams often subside as abruptly as they rise, so that no one could tell how long this particular safety would last.