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She seemed keyed up to carry through something she had planned to do, something hard. She arose and stood by the table, facing him. "I sometimes have thought that you cared for me but I'm through with that now. Nobody really cares for me. I'm only a rough farm hand. I know how to milk and scrub and churn and clean the stable an' that's what I do day in and day out.
"Major Pegram was killed last Wednesday, when trying to get through our lines about Winchester." "Poor fellow!" Nancy's tone was keyed to express simply natural sorrow and regret. "I am sure his death became him." Stanton looked baffled, as his bomb shell exploded without apparent effect. Was there no vulnerable spot in her armor of iron self-control? After a moment he continued his examination.
But so slight was it more a faint vibration than a sound that she would not have heard had not her ears been keyed and listening for it. Yet the man had heard. He was startled in his composed way. "What was that?" he demanded. For answer, her left hand flashed out to the revolver and brought it back.
No other sound came, but the two cattlemen and the bartender were keyed to tense alertness. They had sloughed instantly the easy indolence of casual talk. There came the slap of running footsteps on the sidewalk. A voice called in excitement, "They've killed Ferril." The eyes of the Elk Creek ranchers met. They knew now what was taking place. Ferril was cashier of the Bear Cat bank.
From this, as the noise without became less loud, he glided into Schubert, and so at last ceased when the "all clear" commenced to rend the air. No one had spoken a word, and then Daisy Ryven laughed a queer little awed laugh. She was the only Englishwoman there. "We are keyed up," she said. And when they had all gone I opened my window wide and breathed in the black dark night. Oh!
The sound of a soft footfall rolling a pebble brought him to taut alertness. Eyes and ears became automatic detectives keyed to finest service. A twig snapped in the arroyo. Indistinctly movements of blurred masses were visible. The figure of a man detached itself from the gloom and crept along the sandy wash. A second and a third took shape. The dry bed became filled with vague motion.
Gil spoke a few words and came on with a certain tigerish assurance of his power, but Jean did not move a muscle. She had backed as far away from him as she could get. She was not the kind to weep and plead with him. She just waited; and one felt that she was keyed up to the supreme moment of her life.
At the same time a life of dreary monotony on a dead land becomes more endurable when there is the hope of coming excitement and the spur to effort of a definite place to be won. And when a man is keyed up to the idea of a fight, life seems dull and flat if he is suddenly told that it will not come off. The weather, however, did its best to give us something to think about.
"I am satisfied," wrote Burke, "that, within a few years, there has been a great change in the national character. We seem no longer that eager, inquisitive, jealous, fiery people which we have been formerly, and which we have been a very short time ago." England was the country of Tom Jones, hearty and healthy, but animated by no high principles and keyed to no noble actions.
Why not let me call Sunbeam up here, get her to take you to supper, then both of you relax for the evening? We can talk more once I've gone through your records, and I expect to have a war conference after that, when you'll have to evaluate whatever you know about Thark for us." Medart had been too keyed up by the young Irschchan's demonstration to even try sleeping normally.
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