So he kept her at a quick
walk by pressing the calf of one leg into her flank and turned in the
saddle to watch the town sink behind him. Sometime in the vague, stupid
past Marne had jog-trotted down this slope, but now he was a new man with
an eye which saw all things and a gun which could not fail. Figures,
singularly tiny and singularly distinct, swarmed into the street from
nowhere, men on horses, men swinging into saddles; here and there the slant
light of the afternoon twinkled on gun barrels, and ludicrous thin voices
came piping up the hill. As he reached the nether lip of Murphy's Pass a
small cavalcade detached itself from the main mass before Captain
Lorrimer's saloon and swept down the street, first a dusty figure on a
dusty horse, hardly visible; then a spot of red which must be Harry Fisher
on his blood-bay, with a long-striding sorrel beside him that could carry
no one except grim old Sliver Waldron. Behind these rode one with the
light glinting on his silver conchos--Mat Henshaw, the town Beau Brummel--
then the black Guss Reeve, and last of all "Ronicky" Joe on his pinto;
"Ronicky" Joe, handy man at all things, and particularly guns.
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