The bullet had torn through the flesh just above the knee, inflicting an ugly gash that was forming a pool of blood on the floor.

She glanced around the clearing, taking in the wagon and the load of supplies and trappings scattered over the ground, the two kids, the whiteface bull that was chewing its cud just within the far reaches of the firelight.

He took the reins just below the bit and held them firmly, and it was his turn to smile now.

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.

I was at once disappointed, although just what I had expected him to look like I could not have explained.

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

The valley was only a few hundred yards wide with just about room enough for a properly performed hundred-and-eighty-degree turn.

Greg's airspeed indicator was over 350 when he leveled off just above the trees.

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.

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 ''??

I seized the rack and made a western-style flying-mount just in time, one of my knees mercifully landing on my duffel bag -- and merely wrecking my camera, I was to discover later -- my other knee landing on the slivery truck floor boards and -- but this is no medical report.

The car was just about to us, its driver's fat, solemn face intent on the road ahead, on business, on a family in Sante Fe -- on anything but an old pick-up truck in which two human beings desperately needed rescue.

There was a blur just under my focus of vision, a crash ; ;

I was so scared well, I just ran to my car and came here ''.

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.

Now, he was just in the late poems of Holderlin and therefore had most of the nineteenth century before him -- plus next semester's class preparation.

She was just not able to break the spell.

So if all these beers was to get me in bed, man, you just spent a lot of money ''.

She was telling herself that this might just be her reward at the end of a long meaningful search for truth.

There was no real sign of the river now, just a roiling, oily ribbon of liquid movement through muddy waters that reached everywhere.

He had his voice under control again: no one became aware that he was terrified by what had just happened to him.

He found that if he was tired enough at night, he went to sleep simply because he was too exhausted to stay awake.

Dawn would come soon and the night was at its coldest.

And he was fleeing, running -- fleeing his death and his life at the same time.

Then he was on his way at a gallop.

He scuttled in shadow along the east wall of the stockade and then followed the south wall until he was at the rear of the two frame buildings.

A man was standing in the open door of the lighted orderly room a few yards to Mike's left, but he, too, suddenly made up his mind and went racing to join the confused activity at the east end of the stockade.

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

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

I was nearly thirty at the time.

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

This desire, I went on, growing voluble as my conviction was aroused, had mounted at such a rate recently that I now found its realization necessary not only to my physical but also to my spiritual wellbeing.

Facing the forest now, she who had not dared to enter it before, walked between two trees at random and headed in what she believed was the direction of the pool.

She regarded them as signs that she was nearing the glen she sought, and she was glad to at last be doing something positive in her unenunciated, undefined struggle with the mountain and its darkling inhabitants.

laughing at a dying man, laughing as a man was beaten to death.

He'd started a fire and put coffee on, and now was busy at the work board of his chuck wagon.

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

Tom Horn was soon back at work, giving his secret employers their money's worth.

Haying time was close at hand, and they needed some strong branches to repair a hay rack.

`` It was Brenner's idea '', Jess mumbled, dabbing at his nose.

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.