ly, his rifle at the hip, lowered his head and drank.
A shout came from the road. The two posses had met. Voices mingled in surprise; then in loud discussion. Collins took a step backward into the willows.
“Where’s water in them hills?” he asked the boy, jerking his thumb toward the mountains across the valley, to the south.
The boy pointed to a rounded summit, crowned with black pines, across the valley, to the south.
Collins raised his rifle, clubbed. He knew that he must kill the boy; all through his flight this had been his rigid line of conduct: to kill those from whom he obtained information according to which he must act.
But now, at this moment of peril, with the voices of the posses floating clear to him on the quiet air, the feeling that had been with him since the cessation of the rain enwrapped him subtly—an indifference it was, a weariness, a laziness—he didn’t know what it was; but it made him say:
