ing his hands, passed them
across his forehead and eyes. Once more he stood listening. The silence
was profound.

Troubled, disturbed, Vanamee went away, passing out of the garden,
descending the hill. He forded Broderson Creek where it intersected the
road to Guadalajara, and went on across Quien Sabe, walking slowly,
his head bent down, his hands clasped behind his back, thoughtful,
perplexed.

CHAPTER V

At seven o'clock, in the bedroom of his ranch house, in the
white-painted iron bedstead with its blue-grey army blankets and red
counterpane, Annixter was still asleep, his face red, his mouth open,
his stiff yellow hair in wild disorder. On the wooden chair at the
bed-head, stood the kerosene lamp, by the light of which he had been
reading the previous evening. Beside it was a paper bag of dried prunes,
and the limp volume of "Copperfield," the place marked by a slip of
paper torn from the edge of the bag.

Annixter slept soundly, making great work of the business, unable to
take even his rest gracefully. His eyes were shut so tight that the skin
at their angles was drawn into puckers. Under his pillow, his two
hands were doubled up into fists. At intervals, he gritted his teeth
ferociously, while, from time to time, the abrupt sound of his snoring
dominated the brisk ticking of the alarm clock that hung from the brass
knob of the bed-post, within six inches of his ear.

But immediately after seven, this clock sprung its alarm with the
abruptness of an explosion, and within the second, Annixter had hurled
the bed-clothes from him and flung himself up to a sitting posture on
the edge of the bed, panting and gasping, blinking at the light, rubbing
his head, dazed and bewildered, stupefied at the hideous suddenness with
which he had been wrenched from his sleep.

His first act was to take down the alarm clock and stifle its prolonged
whirring under the pillows and blankets. But when this had been done, he
continued to sit stupidly on the edge of the bed, curling his toes away
from the cold of the floor; his half-shut eyes, heavy with sleep, fixed
and vacant, closing and opening by turns. For upwards of three minutes
he alternately dozed and woke, his head and the whole upper half of his
body sagging abruptly sideways from moment to moment. But at length,
coming more to himself, he straightened up, ran his fingers through his
hair, and with a prodigious yawn, murmured vaguely:

"Oh, Lord! Oh-h, LORD!"