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.
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. He saw
himself for the first time in several moments, and
what he saw made him shudder.
And still in fear of himself he swung El Sangre and
put him down the slope recklessly. Never in his
life had he ridden as he rode in those first five
minutes down the pitch of the hill. He gave El
Sangre his head to pick his own way, and he confined
his efforts to urging the great stallion along.
The blood-bay went like the wind, passing up-jutting
boulders with a swish of gravel knocked from his plunging
hoofs against the rock.
Even in Terry’s passion of self-dread he dimly
appreciated the prowess of the horse, and when they
shot onto the level going of the valley road, he called
El Sangre out of the mad gallop and back to the natural
pace, a gait as swinging and smooth as running water—yet
still the road poured beneath them at the speed of
an ordinary gallop. It was music to Terry Hollis,
that matchless gait. He leaned and murmured to
the pricking ears with that soft, gentle voice which
horses love. The glorious head of El Sangre went
up a little, his tail flaunted somewhat more proudly;
from the quiver of his nostrils to the ringing beat
of his black hoofs he bespoke his confidence that
he bore the king of men on his back.
And the pride of the great horse brought back some
of Terry’s own waning self-confidence.
His father had been up in him as he faced Slim Dugan,
he knew. Once more he had escaped from the commission
of a crime. But for how long would he succeed
in dodging that imp of the perverse which haunted
him?
It was like the temptation of a drug—to
strike just once, and thereafter to be raised above
himself, take to himself the power of evil which is
greater than the power of good. The blow he struck
at the sheriff had merely served to launch him on
his way. To strike down was not now what he wanted,
but to kill! To feel that once he had accomplished
the destiny of some strong man, to turn a creature
of mind and soul, ambition and hope, at a single stroke
into so many pounds of flesh, useless, done for.
What could be more glorious? What could be more
terrible? And the desire to strike, as he had
looked into the sneering face of Slim Dugan, had been
almost overmastering.
