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Brand, Max, 1892-1944

"Black Jack"

He
felt his certainty waver, slip from him. Then the voice of Pollard boomed
out at them:
"Keep them guns in their houses! You hear me talk? The first man that
makes a move I'm going to drill! Slim, get back into the house. Terry,
you damn meateater, git on down that hill!"
Terry did not move, but Slim Dugan stirred uneasily, turned, and said:
"It's up to you, chief. But I'll see this through sooner or later!"
And not until then did Terry turn his horse and go down the hill without
a backward look.

CHAPTER 29

There had been a profound reason behind the sudden turning of Terry
Hollis's horse and his riding down the hill. For as he sat the saddle,
quivering, he felt rising in him an all-controlling impulse that was new
to him, a fierce and sudden passion.
It was joyous, free, terrible in its force--that wish to slay. The
emotion had grown, held back by the very force of a mental thread of
reason, until, at the very moment when the thread was about to fray and
snap, and he would be flung into sudden action, the booming voice of Joe
Pollard had cleared his mind as an acid clears a cloudy precipitate.


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