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Show H^ 358-THE BULL boy stared at him in horror. The man's cry had filled the air like deadi. Then the man looked up, his face iron, dark, rigid, his eyes as wide as if indeed he had seen his own death. Abrupdy he stepped forward and slapped his son across the face. The boy stepped back widi a dun prolonged cry, crumpling, cringing widi the expectation of more blows. "Put that pot down!" The boy set it back near the fire; the man picked it up and poured himself more coffee, hand steady, but when he sank back to his log there was a slight tremor in his knees. He started to drink, stopped, pulled out at his crotch again. "Now it's getting cold. Cold as . . ." He laughed shortly, strangely, and lifted die cup with both hands, sipping the hot black coffee. The boy did not pour himself another cup. Avoiding looking at the hired man, at anything, he sat widi his head lowered until his fadier got up and moved away from the fire. He wanted to die. * * » A wind came over die mountain with the smell of rain in it; a sudden mass of clouds formed in the sky. The boss looked up at them, checked his watch. "I told that feller I wanted them trucks up here early." "That one'U miss us," said the hired man. "It better." The boss shoved his watch back into his pocket and turned to face the wind as if he could block its way. Thick and square and muscular, Stetson hat pulled down over his face, he planted his boots and looked as immovable as a post. But at the first sound of the trucks he turned, hearing them faintly and far below, grinding up the hill, over that distance the roar of the tractors in lower gear a steadily gathering throb in the air, and then the wind rose, suddenly sweeping down the mountain through the aspen and pine with a swcK>shing roar of its own, drowning out the throb of the giant engines, blowing their sound away, blowing, it seemed, the trucks off the road and into nothing. Then it died away, whispering in the trembling aspens, moaning softly in the pines, and once again the beat of the engines pulsed in the air, closer now and more insistent. But the boss did not relax. When the wind rose again he turned abruptly from the road and walked like a stiff-jointed wolf over to the corral, looking through the poles at his cattle. The wind L |