Her face was very thin, and burned by the sun until much of the skin was dead and peeling, the new skin under it red and angry.

Gavin's stallion was in the barn and he tightened the cinches over the saddle blanket, working by touch in the darkness, comforting the animal with easy words.

It was pierced by a wagon gate built of two wings.

In the brief moment I had to talk to them before I took my post on the ring of defenses, I indicated I was sickened by the methods men employed to live and trade on the river.

His face was split by a vermilion streak, his eyes were pools of white ; ;

It was pitiful to see the thin ranks of warriors, old and young, wheeling and twisting their ponies frantically from side to side only to be tumbled bleeding from their saddles by the relentless slam, slam of the cruelly efficient Hawkinses.

He grabbed her by the shoulders and went down on one knee, taking her weight so that some of the wind was driven out of him.

There was an artificial lake just out of sight in the first stand of trees, fed by a half dozen springs that popped out of the ground above the hillside orchard.

only the counter at one end was lighted by a long fluorescent tube suspended directly above it.

He had looked over my forms and was impressed by what he had seen there ; ;

The office was of logs, four rooms, each heated by an iron stove.

The building was dwarfed by the scene outside.

It was partially cemented by ages and pressure, yet it crumpled before the onslaught of the powerful streams, the force of a thousand fire hoses, and with the gold it held washed down through the long sluices.

Even Hague was repelled by the machinelike deadliness that was Kodyke.

When they reached their neighbor's house, Pamela said a few polite words to Grace and kissed Melissa lightly on the forehead, the impulse prompted by a stray thought -- of the type to which she was frequently subject these days -- that they might never see one another again.

She was sure she would reach the pool by climbing, and she clung to that belief despite the increasing number of obstacles.

It was secured by an oversized padlock.

The rustling problem was by no means solved.

Jess's coarse features twisted in a surprised grin which was smashed out of shape by Curt's fist.

Russ ran through the bills and named an amount it was highly unlikely any cowpuncher would come by honestly.

The truth was, the puncher was both bewildered and dismayed by his own mixed luck.

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

But all of this was rationalization.

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.

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.

What else he said was lost in the rattle of gunfire on all sides.

But her prettiness was what he had noticed first, and all the other things had come afterward: cruelty, meanness, self-will.

The water was there, so much of it that it spread all through the dead orchard.

under the circumstances I was only too willing to confess all.

It was all right to put a bunch of ranchers onto horses, to call them Night Riders, to set out to attack the largest mining combination the country had ever seen if all they wanted was adventure.

Hague, like all who worked near the pits, was partly deafened from the constant assault against his eardrums.

Normally Hague wasted no words, but now he found himself unable to stop their flow although he knew Kodyke was aware of all he said.

Perhaps it was all a vividly conceived dream.

It was not, thought Pamela, such an evil place after all.

Was it not possible, after all, that the forest was in league with her and her child that its sympathy lay with the Culvers that she had erred in failing to understand this??

If, when this was all over, she found the words to tell him about it, she wondered if he would ever understand.

He paused only long enough to ascertain that Jess's buckskin was still missing and that his own gray was all right, then climbed through a back window and dropped to the ground outside.

Seeing them waiting there at the foot of Emigrant Rock was so overwhelming that, for a good minute after they rounded the bend and started down the grade leading toward them, Matilda could not speak at all.

Against all expectation, Carmer was inside, clearly enjoying himself to the hilt and already so tipsy that it seemed unlikely he was bothering to note anything or anyone about him.

There was a feeling that this mission would be canceled like all the others and that this muddy wet dark world of combat would go on forever.

It was all Greg had time to see.

An Ah coudn ansuh him an so Ah said ' Aw right, Ah gay-ess, an his fathuh didn uttuh one wohd an aftuh Huhmun was gone, the majuh laughed an tole me thet he an the bawh had been hevin an occasional drink t'gethuh f'ovuh a yeah, onleh an occasional one, but just the same it was behahn mah back, an Ah doan think thet's nahce at all, d'you ''??