Off there to the east went the fifteen best men of the mountain-
desert on the trail of the slender fellow with the black hair and the soft
brown eyes. How he had seemed to shrink with aloofness, timidity, when he
stood there at the door, giving his name. It was not modesty. Billy knew
now; it was something akin to the beasts of prey, who shrink from the eyes
of men until they are mad with hunger, and in the slender man Billy
remembered the same shrinking, the same hunger. When he struck, no wonder
that even the sheriff went down; no wonder if even the fifteen men were
baffled on that trail; and therefore, it was sufficiently insane for him,
Billy the clerk, to sit in his office and dream with his ineffectual hands
of stopping that resistless flight. Yet he pulled himself back to his
problem.
Considering his problem in general, the thing was perfectly simple: Barry
was sure to head west, and to the west there were only two gates--fording
the creek and the river above the junction in the first place, or in the
second place cutting across the Asper far north at Caswell City.
Pages:
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280