"Makes you feel plumb like a man to have
one of these things rubbin' against you again," he observed
irrelevantly. Then he went out, leaving the foreman leaning,
chair tilted, against the wall.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE CAPTURE
Although he had left the room so suddenly, Senor Johnson did not
at once open the gate of the adobe wall. His demeanour was gay,
for he was a Westerner, but his heart was black. Hardly did he
see beyond the convexity of his eyeballs.
The pony, warmed up by its little run, pawed the ground,
impatient to be off. It was a fine animal, clean-built,
deep-chested, one of the mustang stock descended from the Arabs
brought over by Pizarro. Sang watched fearfully from the slant
of the kitchen window. Jed Parker, even, listened for the beat
of the horse's hoofs.
But Senor Johnson stood stock-still, his brain absolutely numb
and empty. His hand brushed against something which fell, to the
ground. He brought his dull gaze to bear on it. The object
proved to be a black, wrinkled spheroid, baked hard as iron in
the sunshine of Estrella's toys, a potato squeezed to dryness by
the constricting power of the rawhide. In a row along the fence
were others. To Senor Johnson it seemed that thus his heart was
being squeezed in the fire of suffering.
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