The HC foreman was not the only individual in that country who, as the sun shoved over the far rim of the world, thought so intensely of his own, wholly personal interests that consciousness of what transpired about him was lost.
Jane Hunter sat suddenly up in her bed, golden hair in a shower about her shoulders, blue eyes that had been waking and painful until dawn, filled with tears. She stared about her as one will who rouses abruptly from a startling dream, lips parted, a hand to her flushed throat, breath quick and irregular. She held so a moment, then sank back into the pillows, calling softly:
"Tom; Tom!"
Her slender body quivered spasmodically and her sobbing became like that of a child. One hand, flung across the cover, clenched feebly and feebly beat the bedding, as though it hammered hopelessly at walls which held her in, making her a prisoner ... as she was, a prisoner to her pride.
And high up on the point which formed the western flank of the Gap to Devil's Hole, Sam McKee dropped down from his gray horse and stood looking far out across the level country beneath him. In the clear air he could see the smoke of the round-up camp fire.
Yesterday he had watched from there, with Hilton's words still in his ears, Hilton's hope in his heart, and had known that Riley rode to the tank. Last night he had talked and walked in the darkness with the Easterner again, had heard Hilton's crafty questioning of Hepburn and Webb which caused them to repeat again and again their belief that Tom Beck would take it upon himself to inspect the damage done by dynamite. He had slept fitfully, in a fever of anticipation.
And yet he had kept secret his achievement in shooting down Two-Bits. There was a time for all things and the time to divulge that minor accomplishment was not yet. For long he had been belittled, and had no standing among his associates; now they were banded in common cause, he had made one step toward triumph and that move had reestablished the confidence that had lain dormant for long. It had enabled Hilton's suggestions to take hold, enabled him to whet his own hate, to work himself into a paroxysm of rage, and today he was to emerge a figure of consequence, for he was to remove the obstacle which was in the path of all.
Webb's battered field glasses were slung over his shoulder and as he picked out the lone dot of moving life, coming slowly in his direction, he unstrapped the case with hands that trembled. It required but one moment to identify that horse for none but Beck's roan swung along with the same distance-eating shack; but McKee stared for a long interval, his body tense, his breath slow and audible, as if tantalizing himself by sight of that isolated rider, teasing his hatred, teasing it....
Then he mounted the gray and swung down the treacherous point, seeking a big wash that made a wrinkle on in the floor of the desert where storm waters had rushed toward the tank for countless decades. In this he could ride unseen and he went forward at a trot, eyes straight ahead, moistening his lips from time to time....