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"Whatever we would spare you and ourselves, sir, we must face the truth," he said. "Which of these men was needed at Silverdale?" Again the murmurs rose up, but Winston sat silent, his pulses throbbing with a curious exultation. He had seen the color creep into Maud Barrington's face, and her aunt's eyes, when he told her what had prompted him to leave Silverdale, and knew they understood him.
When the posse finally caught sight of the man they were after far out across the level and riding toward the west, they knew at once that he was making for the Concho and what protection his fellows might afford him under the circumstances. This did not fit into their scheme. The man-hunt had tuned their pulses to a high pitch.
With lowered eyes and modest mien I was, of course, waiting for her to speak first. I did not wait long. Her voice, concise and direct, rapped out: 'So you require a cook-general? 'Yes er please, I murmured. Under her searching gaze my knees trembled, my pulses throbbed, a slight perspiration broke out on my forehead. My whole being seemed to centre itself in the mute inquiry: 'Shall I suit?
Like the beating of a mighty heart heard through the rushing clamor of the pulses, a single deep-throated bell boomed solemnly six heavy, rumbling strokes. Six o'clock! Kirkwood roused out of his dour brooding. The Amsterdam express would leave at 6:32, and he knew not from what station. Striding swiftly across the promenade, he entered a small tobacco shop and made inquiry of the proprietress.
Well, he lived in an enchanted land; he had to deal with men and women of no ordinary stuff and make, but they acknowledged their connection with her. He was sure that she must be near him. The explanation must come of that, burning with curiosity as he was, he recked little. A meeting must come; all his pulses tingled with the thought.
The glamorous light, the sense of something primitive and vital that the ceremony expressed, and the stir at the pulses caused by the sight of many people moved to do the same thing at the same moment, went to his head.
It was hard to people this solitude with rushing columns of cavalry, and stir its torpid pulses with the shouts of victors, the shrieks of the wounded, and the flash of banner and steel above the surging billows of war. A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action.
The shuffling clowns raise up their heads gradually, until they stand erect and proud; the slouch in the back is taken out, their heavy walk is changed to a firm yet elastic tread, every muscle appears more braced, every nerve, by degrees, new strung; the blood circulates rapidly: pulses quicken, hearts throb, eyes brighten, and as the martial sound pervades their rustic frames, the Cimons of the plough are converted, as if by magic, into incipient heroes for the field; and all this is produced by beating the skin of the most gentle, most harmless animal of creation.
It was always so; the sight of any mountains, a patch of snow on a far blue ridge, set his pulses singing; wakened the wanderlust for the big spaces in God's out-of-doors. And this canyon of the Snoqualmie was old, familiar ground. He had served his surveyor's apprenticeship on these western slopes of the Cascades.
"So we'll get a good meal, and then buy our load," Frank enthused. He felt the texture of his deflated bubb. The hard lines of deep-space equipment quickened his pulses. He forgot the call of Earth. He felt as free and easy as a hobo with cosmic dust in his hair. Blastoff from Serene's port, even with three heavily loaded trader rockets, was comparatively easy and inexpensive.
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