Page:9009 (1908).djvu/199

Rh After a while, looking beneath his arm-pit, he saw vaguely a man riding after him, a man with a sombrero. He turned and looked fair. It was the sheriff, riding strongly but calmly, his sombrero rim flapping, his face very grim; he had missed the sheriff.

It was the first time since he had the rifle that he had missed. Heretofore the gun had leaped to his hip, to his shoulder, by reflex and had blazed death always. It had been impossible to miss; in his eyes the game had loomed up like a mountain. And now he had missed. A fear came upon him; a fear as of the supernatural; clubbing his horse with the butt of the faithless weapon he urged it forward at greater speed; it was beginning to pant now.

The road was rising with the floor of the valley. Ahead on either side lay half-ploughed fields; he saw men bent over their ploughs behind four-horse teams. One of the teams stopped abruptly; the ploughman ran to his horses, fumbled at the traces. Another man, to the left, was doing the same thing. And then, from each Rh