Episode Eight: Cup and Lip Chapter 1

From the time he ha poked a pistol against Sard's fat paunch, to this bullet-pelted ride for life, life had become one ridiculously exciting episode after another.

He had come through like the hero in a best-seller. ... Lacking only a heroine. ... If there had been any heroine it was Eve Strayer. Drama had gone wrong in that detail. ... So perhaps, after all, it was real life he had been living and not drama. Drama, for the masses, must have a definite beginning and ending. Real life lacks the latter. In life nothing is finished. It is always a premature curtain which is yanked by that doddering old stage-hand, Johnny Death.

* * * * *

Smith sat in his saddle, thinking, beginning to be sobered now by the inevitable reaction which follows excitement and mirth as relentlessly as care dogs the horseman.

He had a fine time, -- save for the horror of the Rock-trail. ... He shuddered. ... Anyway, at worst he had not shirked a clean deal in that ghastly game. ... It was God's mercy that he was not lying where Salzar lay, ten feet -- twenty -- a hundred deep, perhaps -- in immemorial slime---He shook himself in his saddle as though to be rid of the creeping horror, and wiped his clammy face.

Now, in the false dawn, a blue-jay awoke somewhere among the oaks and filled the misty silence with harsh grace-notes.

Then reaction, setting in like a tide, stirred more sombre depths in the heart of this young man.