The girt obeyed without a word.
He double half-hitched the rope to the horn of the saddle, swung Captain Jack around. "Look out!" he called to the girl as he started away from the brink of the sand. "Steady, Boy, be careful—" to the broncho. The slack gradually tightened. The strain drew on Carolyn June's arms till it seemed they would be pulled from the sockets. The rope cut cruelly into her body under her shoulders. She wanted to cry—to scream—to laugh. She did neither. She threw back her head and clung with all her strength to the rough lariat, stretched taut as a cable of steel.
The Ramblin' Kid leaned forward in the saddle, his body half turned, eyes looking back along the straight line of the severely tested rope. He swore softly, steadily, under his breath. "God—if it will only hold—if it only don't break!"
Slowly, surely, the little stallion leaned his weight against the tensely drawn riata and Carolyn June felt herself lifted, inch by inch, out of the sand that engulfed her. At last she fell forward—her body free. Without stopping the horse the Ramblin' Kid continued away from the river-bank and dragged the girl across the yielding surface to the solid earth and safety. The instant she was where he could reach her he whirled Captain Jack and rode quickly back. Carolyn June was trying to get to her feet when he sprang from the broncho and helped her to the firm ground on which he stood. She was panting and exhausted.
"Get—get—Old Blue out!" she gasped and dropped limply down on the grass, fingering at the rope to remove it from around her body.
"Danged if she ain't got more heart than I thought she had!" the
Ramblin' Kid said to himself as he lifted the loop from over her head.
"I'm goin' to," he said aloud, "if I can—but—I'm afraid he's gone.
I'll try anyhow—you lay there an' rest—" at the same time remounting
his horse.
The sand covered the rump of Old Blue. The saddle, Parker's it was, was nearly submerged, only the horn and cantle showing above the slimy mass. His head, neck and the top of his withers were yet exposed. He still struggled, wallowing feebly, vainly resisting the downward pull of the sand. Crouching, as if fascinated by the terrible scene, Carolyn June watched as the Ramblin' Kid, waiting his opportunity, at the instant the horse in the sand lifted his head deftly flung the rope over his neck. With a short jerk of the wrist he tightened the noose till it closed snugly about the throat of the broncho. Again turning Captain Jack away from the bank he urged him slowly forward. The rope stiffened. The little stallion bunched himself and desperately strained against the dead weight of Old Blue, multiplied many times by the suction of the sand. The Ramblin' Kid leaned far over the neck of Captain Jack to give the horse the advantage of his own weight and looked back, watching the supreme efforts of the mired broncho as he fought to climb out of the sand. A moment it looked as if the little roan would drag him out. Slowly he seemed to be raising and moving forward. There was a sharp snap. Half-way down its length the lariat parted. At the weak spot the strain was too great. Captain Jack plunged forward to his knees, his nose rooting the earth, and the Ramblin' Kid barely saved himself from pitching over the horse's head.
"That's what I was dreadin'—" he said as he turned and rode back to the edge of the sand.
Carolyn June gazed, wide-eyed, speechless with horror, at the horse in the sand. When the rope broke, Old Blue, with a groan almost human, sank back and quickly settled down until only his head and part of his neck were exposed to view. The Ramblin' Kid looked at the broken rope—the end fastened around the throat of Old Blue had whipped back and was lying far beyond the cowboy's reach. The piece half-hitched to the saddle horn was too short for another throw. Old Blue was doomed. Carolyn June saw him sinking gradually, surely, into the sand. It seemed ages. His eyes appealed with dumb pathos to the group on the bank. They could hear his breath coming in harsh, terrible gasps. The sand seemed to be deliberately torturing him as though it were some hellish thing, alive and of fiendish cunning, that grasped its victim and then paused in his destruction to gloat over his hopeless agony.
The Ramblin' Kid sat Captain Jack and watched.