sounds were the happy noises of families at the end of a day. From
every house they floated out to him, the clamor of children, the deep
laughter of a man, the loud rattle of pans in the kitchen.

"This ain't so bad," Riley Sinclair said aloud and roused the mustang
cruelly to a gallop, the hoofs of his mount splashing through inches of
pungent dust.

The heaviness of the gallop told him that his horse was plainly spent
and would not be capable of a long run before the morning. Riley
Sinclair accepted the inevitable with a sigh. All his strong instincts
cried out to find Sandersen and, having found him, to shoot him and
flee. Yet he had a sense of fatality connected with Sandersen. Lowrie's
own conscience had betrayed him, and his craven fear had been his
executioner. Quade had been shot in a fair fight with not a soul near
by. But, at the third time, Sinclair felt reasonably sure that his luck
would fail him. The third time the world would be very apt to brand him
with murder.

It was a bad affair, and he wanted to get it done. This stay in Sour
Creek was entirely against his will. Accordingly he put the mustang in
the stable behind the hotel, looked to his feed, and then went slowly
back to get a room. He registered and went in silence up to his room.
If there had been the need, he could have kept on riding for a
twenty-hour stretch, but the moment he found his journey interrupted,
he flung himself on the bed, his arms thrown out crosswise, crucified
with weariness.

In the meantime the proprietor returned to his desk to find a long,
gaunt man leaning above the register, one brown finger tracing a name.