"Get back to the ranch. Take my horse with you. I'll attend to this little affair myself. One of us isn't going to sleep in no bed this night.... Besides, I got a little personal matter to settle, and this seems a mighty good chance. You fellers wouldn't be interested."
He jerked his Winchester back over his shoulder and started down-stream.
The others rode away, laughing significantly. Stamford slunk from his hiding-place on Dakota's trail. He had no idea what was in Dakota's mind, but in that mood he was dangerous, and it was someone's business to keep an eye on him.
Presently, far down the river on the other shore, something moved among the rocks. Dakota was invisible in a bend in the cliff, and Stamford fixed his glasses on the spot and watched. The Professor was there, straining at something, jerking forward as if for a fresh hold, and pulling back slowly again. To Stamford's amazement the raft came foot by foot into view from this side of the river and moved out toward the straining figure. And on it was Gee-Gee. The jerking of the craft made the horse rear once or twice, and his legs were braced in terror. Stamford noticed then that the raft was turned for the opposite passage, the higher end toward the shore it was leaving.
Against the pressure of that current, with Gee-Gee aboard, Professor Bulkeley was pulling the raft by sheer force of muscle and the weight of his body.
By the time Dakota came into view again Gee-Gee and the Professor had passed into the rocks on the other side. In time the cowboy arrived at the mooring platform. He saw the raft across the river and sat down under cover to think. In a minute he lifted a huge stone and approached the end of the cable. A few heavy blows severed it, and the wire, with a spitting of fume, sank into the stream. The raft, freed, floated down the current, bumped against hidden rocks, splintered, split apart, one section swinging to destruction lower down.
Dakota lifted his head and laughed into the opposite cliffs.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE BATTLE ON THE CLIFFS
Stamford came to the raft-landing on the river's edge, tired and perturbed, and seated himself to rest. He was very weary and hungry. Dakota had gone on faster and faster. Suddenly Stamford remembered that somewhere ahead, down that cliff, Isabel Bulkeley would be waiting for her brother. He picked himself up in a fever of anxiety and plunged recklessly on.