AC dBooks

And Pete Annersley's history will have to speak for
itself as illustrative of a plan from which he could not have departed
any more than he could have originated and followed to its final
ultimatum.
Life with the storekeeper had been tame. Pete had no horse; and the
sheriff, taking him at his word, had refused to give up either one of
the rifles unless Pete would declare which one he had used that fateful
night of the raid. And Pete would not do that. He felt that somehow
he had been cheated. Even the storekeeper Roth discouraged him from
using fire-arms, fearing that the boy might some day "cut loose" at
somebody without word or warning. Pete was well fed and did not have
to work hard, yet his ideas of what constituted a living were far
removed from the conventions of Concho. He wanted to ride, to hunt, to
drive team, to work in the open with lots of elbow-room and under a
wide sky. His one solace while in the store was the array of rifles
and six-guns which he almost reverenced for their suggestive potency.
They represented power, and the only law that he believed in.


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