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.

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

She had picked up the quirt and was twirling it around her wrist and smiling at him.

He had spent two hours riding around the ranch that morning, and in broad daylight it was even less inviting than Judith Pierce had made it seem.

She had been snared here by a vile sensuality that writhed around her throat in ever-tightening circles.

The metal strip they had taken off from was coal black against the green jungle around it.

Not by the 11:00 sun which had spread a warmth around his spot of grass in the English Gardens and sent him off to sleep ; ;

The Indians who came aboard ship to collect the mail also interested her greatly, even if she was suitably shocked, according to the customs of the society in which she had been reared, to find them `` naked, except a piece of cotton cloth wrapped around their middle ''.

As the field on which my tent was pitched was a favorite natural playground for the kids of the neighborhood, I had made many friends among them, taking part in their after-school games and trying desperately to translate Grimm's Fairy Tales into an understandable French as we gathered around the fire in front of the tent.

By this time word had got around that an American doctor was on the premises.

Apparently still sensitive about the idea with which General Gates had approached him at Saratoga, namely, that George Washington be replaced, Morgan was vehement in his support of the commander-in-chief during the campaign around Philadelphia.

His English friends, it said, had gone into training to keep up with him vocally and with his `` allegro movements around the luncheon table ''.

The revolution in jazz that took place around 1949, the evolution from the `` bebop '' school of Dizzy Gillespie to the `` cool '' sound of Miles Davis and Lennie Tristano, Lee Konitz, and the whole legend of Charlie Parker, had made an impression on many academic and literary men.

An Italian poet had noticed plainclothes policemen lounging around the area of Quirinal Palace, the first time since the war.

Mrs. Podger had obligingly pushed things around on the porch to make room for it, and there it was, slung in a vine-shaded corner, the night breeze rippling its fringe with a slow, caressing movement.

He whirled around, suddenly hot all over, finding the man who had been standing before him a few moments back, nailing him to the spot on which he now stood, open-mouthed.

but when he passed us by, a musket roared, and he reared his horse, swung it around, and began to whip it back in the direction from which he had come.

While she was thus engaged, McFeeley questioned her about her whereabouts the previous day, any recollections she had of people hanging around, of overcurious delivery boys or repairmen, of strange cars cruising the neighborhood.

The street cleaner had not yet been around.

Inside, as soon as Mr. Skopas had disclosed -- in a hoarse whisper -- the detective's errand, his family gathered in a huddle, forming a mass of dark flesh on and around a brocaded sofa which stood at one side of a baroque fireplace.

Rather than sit around waiting for the suitcases to be delivered, they had gone sight-seeing.

The altercation in the coffee house had done little to dampen his spirits, but he was still a little wary around Rector for they had not yet discussed the incident.

She stood clutching her shawl around her shoulders until he had swung the car onto the road.