Page:Son of the wind.djvu/409

RV 391 and a heap of fury in a cage. There was a lost quality somewhere,—the quality that lures possession and eludes it. Yet, always there must be a loss; and even so, what a body! What a flow of muscles under the skin! What a threat in the immobility! His hopes shot up like fire. His eye, busy with outward things, thought something wrong in the prospect before him. He turned angrily to the half-breed. "Why didn't you drive him into the open as I told you, and put up that canvas in front of the trees? How do you think we can lasso him in that thicket?"

"I could not get him out. He would not move. I could not charge him in the trees."

"You never ought to have let him get in there in the first place."

"I could not drive him," the half-breed answered unmoved. "He ran at me, or he ran past me; and I had no one to help."

"Yes, you had. You had that fellow!"

"Oh, him!" The man lifted his shoulders a little. "He went away."

"Went away?"

"Yes, over there, into the trees, running. He went when the woman came."

"Oh!" Carron muttered. "Oh, yes, yes—yes, of course." He repeated vaguely. He looked at Esmeralda Charley hesitatingly as if he had suddenly for-