n too heavy
for her to harbour the thought of food. She settled forward in her chair
and nodded. The talk of the men, though as they ate and drank their
voices were lifted, grew fainter and fainter in her ears, further and
further away. Finally they were blended in an indistinguishable murmur
that meant nothing.... In a doze she caught herself wondering if the
wounded man in the next room would live. It was terribly still in there.

She was in that mental and physical condition when, the body tired and
the brain betwixt dozing and waking, thought becomes a feverish process,
the mind snatching vivid pictures from the day's experience and weaving
them into as illogical a pattern as that of the crazy quilt over her
shoulders. All day long she had ridden in the swaying, lurching, jerking
stage until now in her chair, as she slipped a little forward, she
experienced the sensations of the day. Many a time that day as the
racing horses obeying the experienced hand of the driver swept around a
sharp turn in the road she had looked down a sheer cliff that had made
her flesh quiver so that it had been hard not to draw back and cry out.
She had seen the horses leaping forward scamper like mad runaways down a
long slope, dashing through the spray of a rising creek to take the
uphill climb on the run. And tonight she had seen a masked man shoot
down one of her day's companions and loot the United States mail.... And
in a register somewhere she had written down the name of Hill's Corners.
The place men called Dead Man's Alley. She had never heard the name
until today. Tomorrow she would ask the exact significance of it....

At last she was sound asleep. She had found comfort by twisting sideways
in her chair and resting her shoulder against the warm rock-masonry of
the outer edge of the fireplace. She awoke with a start. What had
recalled her to consciousness she did not know. Perhaps a new voice in
her ears, perhaps Poke Drury's tones become suddenly shrill. Or it may
be that just a sudden sinking and falling away into utter silence of all
voices, the growing still of hands upon dice cups, all eloquent of a new
breathless atmosphere in the room had succeeded in impressing upon her
sleep-drugged brain the fact of still another vital, electrically
charged moment. She turned in her chair. Then she settled back,
wondering.

The door was open; the wind was sweeping in; again old newspapers went
flying wildly as though in panicky fear.