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I lay smoking in the dark, waiting for the moon to rise, and listening to the "crunch, crunch" of the horses still steadily feeding, when a low call from Inyati made me spring to my feet, He had climbed to the top of the highest dune, and at his second call I ploughed my way up through the loose sand till I stood beside him. He was pointing away to the south-east.
It meant hot supper and a ravenous appetite and a slow roasting before an open fire. Sharp little pictures flashed before his eyes as he walked along, and he fancied he could hear the soft crunch of buggy wheels in the dried leaves and the pad-pad of hoofs. It all seemed wrapped up in the same parcel with his childhood, stored away somewhere in musty archives.
A voice, the Skeeter's, bawled out raucously: "Rush him all together from different sides at once!" A backward leap! Jimmie Dale's boot was crashing glass and frame, stamping at it desperately, making a hole for his body through the skylight. A yell, a chorus of them, answered this then the crunch of racing feet on the gravel roof.
Many a time his eyes opened, and he saw nothing, but when he did see and hear it was by vague glimpses. He heard the crying crunch of the snow underfoot; he heard the panting and snorting of the horses; he felt the swing and jolt of the saddle beneath him; he saw the grim faces of the long-riders, and he said: "The law has taken me."
Next day when I entered the woods a brittle crust made silent traveling impossible, and over the rocks and bare places was a sheet of ice covered thinly with snow. I was out all day, less in hope of finding deer than of watching the wild things; but at noon, as I sat eating my lunch, I heard a rapid running, crunch, crunch, crunch, on the ridge above me.
Then came a bellow of agony from the ox, and a crunch as the lion put his teeth through the poor brute's neck, and I began to understand what had happened. My rifle was in the waggon, and my first thought was to get hold of it, and I turned and made a bolt for it.
Her mouth had a pitiful little droop. He sat down, still holding her like a child, and felt tentatively of her arms, her shoulders, vaguely prepared to feel the crunch of a broken bone. There was no water nearer than the ranch. Jamie, having rolled over twice, was lying on his side near a scraggly buck-brush, looking back up the hill, apparently wondering whether it would be worth while to get up.
Under the lash of a rope, the animal had lumbered across the pasture for several hundred yards, where he paused languidly to crunch some bunch-grass. There was an air of lassitude and weakness about the creature which made Buck, as he approached, eye it with anxious intentness. A dozen feet or so away he jerked his horse to a standstill and caught his breath with an odd whistling sound.
They strained their muscles, but for a moment or two could not move the craft; then the roller jarred across a stone, there was a crunch of gravel, and she stopped, a foot lower down. Thirlwell gasped and moved his hands to get another grip. He thought they had made an alarming noise, but it was too late to be cautious. They must finish the job. "Lift her as you shove!" he said.
"And I'll have built plans for twenty years on, on the sands," and MacDonald flicked the bronchos up with his whip. There was a long silence but for the crunch of the wheels through the road dust. "MacDonald," said Matthews abruptly, "A'm goin' t' see this thing thro'. A don't mean y'r daughter's love; th' angels o' Heaven have that in their own charge! A'm referrin' t' this mine thing!
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