A sense of impending calamity, oppressive, foreboding, gloomy, passed through the air overhead in the night, a long shiver of anguish and of terror, mysterious, despairing.
In the harness room, however, the excitement continued unchecked.

One rancher after another delivered himself of a torrent of furious words.
There was no order, merely the frenzied outcry of blind fury.

One spirit alone was common to all--resistance at whatever cost and to whatever lengths.
Suddenly Osterman leaped to his feet, his bald head gleaming in the lamp-light, his red ears distended, a flood of words filling his great, horizontal slit of a mouth, his comic actor's face flaming.

Like the hero of a melodrama, he took stage with a great sweeping gesture.
"ORGANISATION," he shouted, "that must be our watch-word.

The curse of the ranchers is that they fritter away their strength.