ISBN: 2940013680340

As his goaded horse plunged into the road, Nevada looked back overhis shoulder. The lane he had plowed through the crowd let him seeback into the circle where the three men lay prostrate… Mehr…

As his goaded horse plunged into the road, Nevada looked back overhis shoulder. The lane he had plowed through the crowd let him seeback into the circle where the three men lay prostrate. The bluesmoke from his gun was rising slowly, floating away. Ben Ide'sface shone white and convulsed in the sunlight.So long, Pard! yelled Nevada, hoarsely, and stood in his stirrupsto wave his sombrero high. That, he thought, was farewell foreverto this friend who had saved and succored and uplifted him, whom heloved better than a brother.Then Nevada faced the yellow road down which his horse was racing,and the grim and terrible mood returned to smother the heart-swelling emotion which had momentarily broken it.There was something familiar and mocking about this precipitateflight on a swift horse, headed for the sage and the darkmountains. How often had he felt the wind sting his face on a runfor his life! But it was not fear now, nor love of life, that madehim a fugitive.The last gate of the ranch was open, and Nevada flashed through itto turn off the road into the sage and go flying down the trailalong the shore of the lake. The green water blurred on one sideof him and the gray sage on the other. Even the winding trail wasindistinct to eyes that still saw red. There was no need now forthis breakneck ride. To be sure, the officers of the law wouldeventually get on his track, as they had been for years; butthought of them scarcely lingered a moment in his consciousness.The action of a swift and powerful horse seemed to be necessary tothe whirling of his mind. Thoughts, feelings, sensationsregurgitated around that familiar cold and horrible sickness ofsoul which had always followed the spilling of human blood andwhich this time came back worse than ever.The fierce running of the horse along the levels, around the bendsof the trail, leaping washes, plunging up and down the gullies,brought into tense play all Nevada's muscular force. It seemedlike a mad race away from himself. Burning and wet all over, hegradually surrendered to physical exertion.Five miles brought horse and rider far around to the other side ofthe lake. Here the trail wound down upon the soft sand, where thehorse slowed from run to trot, and along the edge of the lake,where the midday sun had thawed the ice. Nevada had a break in hisstrained mood. He saw the deep hoof tracks of horses along theshore, and the long cuts and scars on the ice, where he and Ben andthe freed outlaws had run that grand wild stallion, California Red,to his last plunge and fall. Nevada could not help but think, ashe passed that place, and thrill as he remembered the strange luckycatch of the wild horse Ben Ide loved so well. What a trick forfortune to play! How mad Ben had been--to bargain with therustlers they had captured--to trade their freedom for the aid theygave in running down the red stallion! Yet mad as that act hadbeen, Nevada could only love Ben the more. Ben was the true wild-horse hunter.Nevada reached the bluff where Forlorn River lost itself in thelake, and climbed the sloping trail to the clump of trees and thecabin where he and Ben had lived in lonely happiness. Ben, theoutcast son of a rich rancher of Tule Lake--and he, the wandering,fugitive, crippled gunman, whom Ben had taken in with only onequestion. Digital Content>E-books>Fiction>Fiction Literary>Fict Literary, WDS Publishing Digital >16<

ISBN: 2940013680340

Nevada Nevada~~Zane-Grey Fiction>Fiction Literary>Fict Literary NOOK Book (eBook), WDS Publishing