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 the one where he now crouched under the mare's neck. His back was wedged into the slope of the manger, for he was trying to make himself smaller than a medium-size, healthy man can be reduced without some process of desiccation that even the strain of suspense cannot equal.

The men entered the stall, joking on the attachment of the horse for his home state, a quality that Simpson would not have given him credit for if the evidence had not been so direct and disinterested. They ran their hands over the horse, admiring his points, Dan declaring he was good for seventy-five dollars of any man's money. Noah grunted a horse-wise assent. Then they turned their attention to the mare.

Simpson felt his hair crinkle with apprehension. He was gripping his gun as tight as if he had been frozen to it, elbow against his side, all on edge to pump lead if they came prowling into that stall and found him.

"She's a good 'n," Dan said. "I wouldn't mind keepin' them two myself if I could afford it. How old do you take her to be?"

"About five, or goin' on," Noah replied. "I'll take a look at the hollers of her eyes; I can tell you in three months of her age."

Simpson felt a cold prickling run over the skin of his back and up to the edge of his hair. It was like a draft of wind on a sweating skin, vestigial sensation of bristles rising, inheritance of horror, anger and defiance from the arboreal days. He pressed his back against the slanting vertical poles of the manger—the tops were nailed to a horizontal timber, the bottoms to the wall, the manger