How he had seemed to shrink with aloofness, timidity, when he stood there at the door, giving his name.
It was not modesty.

Billy knew now; it was something akin to the beasts of prey, who shrink from the eyes of men until they are mad with hunger, and in the slender man Billy remembered the same shrinking, the same hunger.

When he struck, no wonder that even the sheriff went down; no wonder if even the fifteen men were baffled on that trail; and therefore, it was sufficiently insane for him, Billy the clerk, to sit in his office and dream with his ineffectual hands of stopping that resistless flight.

Yet he pulled himself back to his problem.
Considering his problem in general, the thing was perfectly simple: Barry was sure to head west, and to the west there were only two gates--fording the creek and the river above the junction in the first place, or in the second place cutting across the Asper far north at Caswell City.
If he could be turned from the direction of Tucker Creek he would head for the second possible crossing, and when he drew near Caswell City if he were turned by force of numbers again he would unquestionably skirt the Asper, hoping against hope that he might find a fordable place as he galloped south.

But, going south, he might be fenced again from Tucker Creek, and then his case would be hopeless and his horse worn down.
It was a very clever plan, quite simple after it was once conceived, but in order to execute it properly it was necessary that the outlaw be pressed hard every inch of the way and never once allowed to get out of sight.