He turned
again from her to the men, his regard chiefly for Hap Smith.
"Well?" he said lightly, being the first to break the silence. "What's
wrong?"
There are moments in which it seems as if time itself stood still.
During the spellbound fragment of time a girl, looking out from under a
cupped hand, noted a man and marvelled at him. By his sheer physical
bigness, first, he fascinated her. He was like the night and the storm
itself, big, powerful, not the kind born to know and suffer restraint;
but rather the type of man to dwell in such lands as stretched mile
after unfenced mile "out yonder" beyond the mountains. As he moved he
gave forth a vital impression of immense animal power; standing still he
was dynamic. A sculptor might have carved him in stone and named the
result "Masculinity."
The brief moment in which souls balanced and muscles were chained passed
swiftly. Strangely enough it was old man Adams who precipitated action.
The old man was nervous; more than that, bred here, he was fearless.
Also fortune had given him a place of vantage. His body was half
screened by that of Hap Smith and by a corner of the bar. His eager old
hand snatched out Hap Smith's dragging revolver, levelled it and
steadied it across the bar, the muzzle seeking the young giant who had
come a step forward.
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