When they were closer and he saw that one was a woman, he was more puzzled than ever.

He was silent a moment, thinking he could use a man this time of year, and if the girl could cook, it would give him more time in the meadows, but he knew nothing about the couple.

There was more to this than Jones had told him.

I decided to see no more of the clerk until the processing of my papers was completed.

Unconcerned, indifferent, unmotivated, the forest was simply there -- fighting man's depredations with more abundant growth and man's follies with its own musical evening laughter.

He could move very quickly, she knew ( although he seldom found occasion to do so ), but he was more wiry than truly strong.

Somehow more terrible than the certainty that he was about to die was the knowledge that Lord would probably not suffer for it: the murder would go unpunished.

It was to be nothing more than that.

No man's name brought more cheers when it was announced in a rodeo.

But he was more than half-drunk, and his faculties were dulled.

Over the rapidly-diminishing outline of a jump seat piled high with luggage Herry's black brushcut was just discernible, near, or enviably near that spot where -- hidden -- more delicately-textured, most beautifully tinted hair must still be streaming back in cool, oh cool wind sweetly perfumed with sagebrush and yucca flowers and engine fumes.

Johnson unwired the right hand door, whose window was, like the left one, merely loosely-taped fragments of glass, and Johnson wadded himself into a narrow seat made still more narrow by three cases of beer.

True, she was my Aunt, married to an Uncle related to me only by marriage, but why she had married a man twice her age, and more, perhaps, I did not know or much care.

Keith Sterling had looked down on the Brahmaputra more times than he could remember, during the war days when he flew over the Hump of the world, thinking it high adventure in those times before man was guiding himself through outer space.

This one was actually more of a `` near miss ''.

Keith was on his feet because he didn't care at all about life any more: Penny on her feet, proudly, because she cared too much.

Because he couldn't hear them, he was more convinced they were there.

He was the lawman who survived more gunfights than any other famous gun-slinging character in the book.

His bold eyes raked the woman, and a perceptive spectator might sense that there was more to their relationship than that of slave to owner.

He bounced exuberantly on the sagging bed and was even more delighted when Madame Lalaurie -- after closing the door -- showed the slave that the bed was designed for something other than slumber.

The girl was not more than 16.

In every war of the United States since the Civil War the South was more belligerent than the rest of the country.

When the meal was ready, he told Jones to wash up, and going into the front room, woke the girl.

Cabot turned back to the men and he was drunk with the thing they would do, wild to break from the cloying warmth of the saloon into the cold of the ebbing night.

The first part of the road was steep, but it leveled off after the second bend and curled gradually into the valley.

Clyde Miller was crying softly to himself, shedding his striped suit and fumbling into the nondescript butternut pants, the worn brown shirt.

For everyone involved knew that the whole valley was a powder keg, and Mitchell Barton the fuse which could send it into explosive violence.

It was payday for Highlands, and he was packing a lot of money back into the oil fields.

By failing to do as he was told instantly -- to take out a permit or return the gun to his car -- he had played into Lord's hands.

Even the knowledge that she was losing another boy, as a mother always does when a marriage is made, did not prevent her from having the first carefree, dreamless sleep that she had known since they dropped down the canyon and into Bear Valley, way, way back there when they were crossing those other mountains.

When it was followed by a second, whining even closer, Cobb swerved sharply aside into a depression.

Whoever was out there hiding in the brushy cover was besieging the Antler house and, having spotted his approach, was determined to drive him off before he could get into the fight.

Every plane that could fly was sent into the air.

How lightly her `` eventshah-leh '' passed into the crannies where I was storing dialect material for some vaguely dreamed opus, and how the word would echo.

The way his red rubber lips were stretched across his pearly little teeth I thought he was only having a little joke, but, no, he wanted me to bend down from the roar of wind so he could roar something into my ear.

It was as if they could hardly wait to get into their costumes, cover their faces with masks and go adventuring.

Singing into the mirror and his interested eyes, he was pleased to note, when he stripped for his own bath, that he still had the best part of his Italian sun tan.

Her stern was down and a sharp list helped us to cut loose the lifeboat which dropped heavily into the water.

Our lifeboat was filling rapidly and despite what I had heard of the inhabitants of Eromonga, I was glad to see a long and graceful outrigger manned by three bronzed girls glide out of a lagoon into the open sea and toward our craft.

She softly let herself into the bed, and took her regular side, away from the door, where she slept better because Keith was between her and the invader.

In two minutes the body of Tilghman's former comrade, who had been killed by Blue Throat in a gambling brawl the previous night, was carried into the town's funeral parlor to be prepared for decent burial.

Within seconds the big barn was blasted into smoking splinters, with every outlaw either dead or injured inside.