The best antidote for the bitterness and disappointment that poisoned him was hard work.

It was the only thing about her that was the least bit hard to remember.

The flat, hard cap was small, but he thrust it to the back of his head.

clutched her throat and sucked up the moisture in her mouth so that her tongue was dry and hard and stuck to the roof of her mouth and her teeth were clenched together in the rigid fixture of her jaws.

He was an honest man doing a hard job, and the implication that he was anything else was unbearable.

He was looking out on the dark waters of the Lake when I came upon him and without wasting words I smacked him hard across the face.

Her laugh was hard.

It was snowing hard when they got there and they saw no horses outside.

Then when Miss Langford was on the end of the line of girls, Jack, in the middle of the line, gave an extra hard pull and the young teacher sprawled backwards, sitting down hard, her dress flying over her head.

It was Dandy Brandon, clad only in a bloody loincloth, emaciated and quaking as if the devil were breathing hard on him.

Thomas tried hard to have his cavalry ready for the test it was to meet, but his plans were wrecked when it was forced into a campaign without optimum mobility and with its commander stripped from it.

It was the hard way to fight a war but Thomas did it without making any disastrous mistakes.

Banks the Butcher was a hard master and a hard father, a man who didn't seem to know the difference between the living flesh of his family and the hanging carcasses of his stock in trade.

Her brother Karl was a very gentle soul, her mother was a quiet woman who said little but who had hard, probing eyes.

Lewis was spending his mornings, with the help of two secretaries, on the galleys of that long novel, making considerable revisions, and the combination of hard work and hard frivolity exhausted him once more, so that he was compelled to spend three days in the Harbor Sanatorium in the last week of January.

He didn't think it was possible for this couple to be pretending.

It must have hurt her even to walk, for the sole was completely off her left foot and Morgan saw that it was bruised and bleeding.

It was the only thing in his life for which he felt guilt.

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.

Still, I was disgusted with myself for agreeing with Montero's methods.

He was naked except for a clout.

Now under me I could see him for what he really was, a boy dressed up in streaks of paint.

Well, the grass was there, though in some places the ground was too steep for a cow to get to it.

But it was not easy for him and he often slipped.

Now, here was something of obvious importance to me, yet when I reached for the tickets he snatched them away from my hand.

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.

I was constantly searching for clues around the neighborhood of the hall.

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.

Was I sure, he asked, that I knew what I was applying for??

At one and the same time, she was within it but still searching for the drawbridge that would give her entry.

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.

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

I was just doing my job, just following orders, and for that he's going to kill me.

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.

He was readying a batch of sourdough biscuits for the Dutch oven.

It was a fair fight, the boy provoked it -- Big Charlie told me so.

There was no one but me.

Next to him was a young boy I was sure had sat near me at one of the trading sessions.

Above me a dark rider was whipping his pony with a quirt in an attempt to hurdle the bales.

This impressed me, until I realized how limited was his sphere of influence.

I was shown, instead, a batch of white tickets of the sort handed out, he told me, every morning.

Though only a relatively short walk separated it from my own part of town, its character was wholly foreign to me.

The river was only a few blocks away but an unbroken line of piers prevented me from seeing it.

`` Jackson recruited his critters, and him and me fixed up his wagon while we was waiting for you to catch up.

Still nursing anger I listlessly thumbed a car that was slowly approaching, its pre-war chrome nearly blinding me.

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 ''??

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.

At once my ears were drowned by a flow of what I took to be Spanish, but -- the driver's white teeth flashing at me, the road wildly veering beyond his glistening hair, beyond his gesticulating bottle -- it could have been the purest Oxford English I was half hearing ; ;

She was still hugging the stained coat around her, so I said, `` Relax, let me take your things.

It was fun for me, all right.

He caught up with me once and grabbed me, but I was all covered with zing -- it's very slippery, you know ''.

I didn't get a good look at him at all, his back was to me, and I was so scared It was just somebody in a man's suit.