Page "adventure" Paragraph 93

Gavin's face was bloodless with excitement.

He did not look back ; ;

he could feel more than hear the staccato beat of hoofs that fanned out across the prairie to the north.

He knew who was riding after him -- the men he had known all his life, the men who had worked for him, sworn their loyalty to him.

Now they were riding to kill him.

And he was fleeing, running -- fleeing his death and his life at the same time.

The land over which he sped was the land he had created and lived in: his valley.

With every leaping stride of the horse beneath him he crossed one more patch of earth that had been his, that he would never see again.

The Gap looming before him -- the place where had confronted Jack English on that day so many years ago -- was his exit from all that had meaning to him.