He could merely draw together a vague abstraction of a man to whom the storm and the wild geese who ride the storm had meaning and relationship.

The logic which he loved was breaking to pieces in the hands of Randall Byrne.
Silence, after all, is only a name, never a fact.

There are noises in the most absolute quiet.

If there is not even the sound of the cricket or the wind, if there are not even ghost whispers in the house, there is the sigh of one's own breathing, and in those moments of deadly waiting the beat of the heart may be as loud and as awful as the rattle of the death-march.

Now, between the doctor and the cowpuncher, such a silence began.