sheriff, the men scattered in a circle behind the pines crowning it.
One of the men stepped upon a dry twig, and Collins sat up to the crackle. He saw the man, dodging behind a tree, and at the same time, another, then arms passing or faces peering from behind other trees. He grasped his rifle and half stood up.
He remained thus, on his knee, a moment; he seemed listening intently, listening not to what might come from the outside, but to some subtle inner command. And a great wave of lassitude, of the inexplicable lassitude that for several days had lurked about him, now whelmed him in a long, heavy and enveloping caress.
“Oh, hell!” he said—and he lay down again on his back, in the lush grass, and gazed up at the little white cloud far up in the blue sky, the ‘fresh tender blue sky.
And to the sheriff’s raised ordering hand, the man-hunters began to shoot. They shot from a circle, at the stretched figure in the centre. It was hidden by the grass, it lay flat, it was a hard
