He was thinking of Rittenhouse and how he had left him there, to rock to death on the porch of the Splendide.

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.

Someone evidently was on duty there.

Then he was on his way at a gallop.

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.

Mike tested the leg and found that he was able to hobble around on it.

Then he went on to the Cheyennes and told them that the Sioux was goin' to move up.

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.

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

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.

He got up slowly, and she was already on her feet, and he stood facing her.

On a shelf in the office behind the counter was a small radio dialed permanently on a station which broadcast only vulgar commercials and cheap popular music.

Once, pressing him, I learned that his job was only part-time, in the afternoons when nothing went on in the hall.

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.

It was to him that Barton had sent Carl Dill on Dill's release from the prison.

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.

He had to depend on himself, since he was invariably miles and hours away from others.

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

He'd put on his old brown corduroy coat and it was already soaked.

He was puffing on a cigar, and he was turning up his coat collar against the rain.

No man laid a hand on him, but the threat of violence was there.

I found a trooper once the Apache had spread-eagled on an ant hill, and another time we ran across some teamsters they'd caught, tied upside down on their own wagon wheels over little fires until their brains was exploded right out o' their skulls.

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

Morgan hesitated, thinking that if this was a trick, it was a good one.

There was no one but me.

The pony herd was the one flaw in our defense ; ;

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

There was only one place where Jake Carwood's description had gone badly awry: the peace and quiet.

The town was about what Wilson expected: one main street with its rows of false-fronted buildings, a water tower, a few warehouses, a single hotel ; ;

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

In the mornings, I was informed, fluorescent tubes, similar to the one above the counter, illuminated the entire 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.

The one thing they had in common was their hatred.

There was only one place where the mountain might receive her -- that unnamed, unnameable pool harbored in its secret bosom.

But she was caught in it, and she faced the terrible possibility that, if it were a dream, it was one from which she might never awaken.

That was another one of those traps.

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

All the doors were open at this hour except one, and it was toward this that Stevens made his way with Russ close at his shoulder.

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 ''??

Such was my state of mind that I did not question the possibility of this ; ;

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

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

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

At last, when I put it to him directly, the clerk was forced to admit that the delay in my case was unusual.

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

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

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 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 ; ;

Just as I got to my knees, there was again the sound of the fence stretching, and I had time only to start taking my kneeling posture seriously.

Miraculously, the bottle was still in my hand, foam still geysering over my ( luckily ) waterproof watch.

The Indian was again raising his bottle, but to my astonished relief -- probably only a fraction of Johnson's -- the bottle this time went to the Indian's lips.

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

There had been a good second or two during which my muffler had been blowing out, and now I was certain I'd seen her somewhere before.