But if he was rapid with his weapons he made no boast of it. He was
quiet in manner, unobtrusive. He was taciturn also, for he had been
taught the value of silence by his parents, though in his narrowed
glances men had been made to see a suggestion of action that was more
eloquent than speech. He was a slumbering volcano of passion that
might at any time become active and destroying.
Gazing now from under the brim of his hat at the desolate, silent world
that swept away from the base of the hill on whose crest he sat, his
lips curved with a slow, bitter sneer. During the time he had been on
the hill he had lived over his life and he saw its bleakness, its
emptiness, its mystery. This was his country. He had been born here;
he had passed days, months, years, in this valley. He knew it, and
hated it. He sneered as his gaze went out of the valley and sought the
vast stretches of the flaming desert. He knew the desert, too; it had
not changed. Riding through it yesterday and the day before he had
been impressed with the somber grimness of it all, as he had been
impressed many times before when watching it from this very hill. But
it was no more somber than his own life had been; its brooding silence
was no deeper than that which dwelt in his own heart; he reflected its
spirit, its mystery was his.
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