Once, long before, on the night Venters had carried Bess through
the canyon and up into Surprise Valley, he had experienced the
strangeness of faculties singularly, tinglingly acute. And now
the same sensation recurred. But it was different in that he felt
cold, frozen, mechanical incapable of free thought, and all about
him seemed unreal, aloof, remote. He hid his rifle in the sage,
marking its exact location with extreme care. Then he faced down
the lane and strode toward the center of the village. Perceptions
flashed upon him, the faint, cold touch of the breeze, a cold,
silvery tinkle of flowing water, a cold sun shining out of a cold
sky, song of birds and laugh of children, coldly distant. Cold
and intangible were all things in earth and heaven. Colder and
tighter stretched the skin over his face; colder and harder grew
the polished butts of his guns; colder and steadier became his
hands as he wiped the clammy sweat from his face or reached low
to his gun-sheaths. Men meeting him in the walk gave him wide
berth. In front of Bevin's store a crowd melted apart for his
passage, and their faces and whispers were faces and whispers of
a dream. He turned a corner to meet Tull face to face, eye to
eye. As once before he had seen this man pale to a ghastly, livid
white so again he saw the change. Tull stopped in his tracks,
with right hand raised and shaking.
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