If he had married her, he'd have been asking for trouble.

They had been seen as soon as they left the ranch, picked out of the darkness by the weary though watchful eyes of two men posted a few hundred yards away in the windless shelter of the trees.

They greeted the news angrily, as though they had been cheated of purpose.

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.

He had been carrying an Enfield rifle and a holstered navy cap-and-ball pistol.

But the luck that had been running their way left him.

His shout had been taken up and repeated.

A sizable supply of powder had been touched off.

The worst part had been the waiting ; ;

The war captain had been badly wounded and was fighting to hold his seat.

And one had been too many.

That afternoon when they had pulled up in front of the broken-down ranch house, his hopes had been high.

The place had been cheap -- just the little he had left after Amelia's burial -- and it would serve its purpose.

I had for some time been hoping, in vain, for one of the dim figures to pass between the fan vents and myself.

Although I had been inside it I had not yet seen it functioning.

No one was behind it, but in the rear wall of the office I noticed, for the first time, a door which had been left partially open.

He had been worried that with Miller and Rankin added to the escape party they would be short.

He had been one of the original Night Riders, one who had escaped the trial.

He had been the auditor for the mining syndicate, and he had stolen fifty thousand dollars of the syndicate's money.

Then the vein had petered out and the whole project had been abandoned.

The sensation he so overwhelmingly realized was one which told him he had been there before but he knew he had not, and could not recall any place he had visited to be likened to the limpid green water or the little fountain-falls or the green demon imprisoned beyond his reach.

" The Franks then imprisoned Syagrius, and once his control over Syagrius ' former kingdom was secure Clovis had him beheaded.

His participation in the attempted usurpation of John Komnenos the Fat in 1200 had caused him to be imprisoned until the accession of Isaac II Angelos, who was restored to the throne after having been deposed and imprisoned by his brother Alexios III, and his son Alexios IV Angelos, who were placed on the throne by the intervention of the Fourth Crusade in July 1203.

Soon afterwards he had the Empress Maria imprisoned and then killed ( forcing a signature from the child Emperor Alexius to put his mother to death ), by Pterygeonites and the hetaireiarches Constantine Tripsychos.

Al-Mutarrif had accused Muhammad of plotting with the rebel Umar ibn Hafsun, and Muhammad had been imprisoned.

Euna Lee and Laura Ling had been imprisoned for illegally entering the country from China.

Their commander-in-chief that day, Marshal Tallard – who, unlike his subordinates, had not been ransomed or exchanged – was taken to England and imprisoned in Nottingham until his release in 1711.

The Act had no effect on illegal practices: five clergy were imprisoned for contempt of court and after the trial of the much loved Bishop Edward King of Lincoln, it became clear that some revision of the liturgy had to be embarked upon.

Vladko Maček, who had succeeded Radić as leader of the Croatian Peasant Party, the largest political party in Croatia, was imprisoned, and members of a newly emerging insurgent movement, the Ustaše, went into exile.

In February, the people rose again: Alexius IV was imprisoned and executed, and Murzuphlus took the purple as Alexius V. He made some attempt to repair the walls and organise the citizenry, but there had been no opportunity to bring in troops from the provinces and the guards were demoralised by the revolution.

To prevent Charles using this unrest to his own advantage, Plectrude had him imprisoned in Cologne, the city which was destined to be her capital.

The two companions had been imprisoned by Hades for attempting to kidnap Persephone.

Chadwick had been imprisoned for nine years at that time and continued to be held in prison until 2009, when a state court set him free after 14 years, making his imprisonment the longest on a contempt charge to date.

Cesare called for a reconciliation, but imprisoned his condottieri in Senigallia, a feat described as a " wonderful deceiving " by Paolo Giovio, and had them executed.

General MacArthur had Ayukawa imprisoned for 21 months as a war criminal.

Diderot, who had been under police surveillance since 1747, was swiftly identified as the author ... and was imprisoned for some months at Vincennes, where he was visited almost daily by Rousseau, at the time his closest and most assiduous ally.

On July 31, 2008, an unnamed former White House official alleged that the US had imprisoned and interrogated at least one suspect on Diego Garcia during 2002 and possibly 2003.

In 1558, Elizabeth succeeded her half-sister, during whose reign she had been imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels.

Such was the case with Elizabeth's rival, Mary, Queen of Scots, whom she imprisoned in 1568 and eventually had executed in 1587.

The resolution was accepted, and all of the delegates who had spoken out were expelled from the party and imprisoned.

His plans and dreams had revolved around her so much and for so long that now he felt as if he had nothing.

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.

And, for the sake of Julia and Susan, it had to be tried.

Hell, they were fightin' each other so hard they had no time for anyone else.

I saw the clergyman kneel for a moment by the twitching body of the man he had shot, then run back to his position.

For although I had crossed a corner of the hall on my way to the toilet I still could not tell for sure how far to the rear the darkness extended.

It was, I felt, possible that they were men who, having received no tickets for that day, had remained in the hall, to sleep perhaps, in the corners farthest removed from the counter with its overhead light.

He had done time for the theft.

That mistake, she thought, had cost her dearly these past few days, and she wanted to avoid falling into any more of the traps that the mountain might set for her.

She seemed to have come such a long distance -- too far for her destination which had wilfully been swallowed up in the greedy gloom of the trees.

Never, he'd once told Joyce, had he encountered any man or situation that called for a gun.

A wildcatter had to be prepared for almost any emergency.

That was the day that he had practically mopped up the main street of Big Sands with Aaron McBride, field boss for the Highlands Oil & Gas Company.

Tom had been laying for Aaron McBride for a long time, just waiting to catch him out of line.

He had a legitimate reason for wearing it.

Hank had gathered wood for a cookfire, and his wife was busy at it now.