Casey has since told me that she was the creepiest thing he ever
saw in his life. Yet he could not explain why it was so. The
woman's face was not so old, though it was lined and without
color. There was a terrible quiet in her features, but he felt,
somehow, that her thoughts were not quiet. It was as if her
thoughts were reaching out to him, telling him things too awful
for her thin, hushed lips to let pass.

But after all, Casey's main object was to locate the man with the
rifle, and to do it before he himself was seen on the butte. He
watched a little longer the woman who rocked and rocked. Never
once did her eyes move from that fixed point on the rug. Never
once did her fingers move on the arm of the chair. Her mouth
remained immobile as the lips of a dead woman. He had to force
himself to leave the window; and when he did, he felt guilty, as
if he had somehow deserted some one helpless and needing him. He
sneaked back, lifted himself and took another long look. The old
woman was rocking back and forth, her face quiet with that
terrible, pent placidity which Casey could not understand.

Away from the cabin a pebble's throw, he shook his shoulders and
pulled his mind away from her, back to the man with the rifle--
and to Barney. Rocking in a chair never hurt anybody that he
ever heard of. And shooting from rim-rocks did. And Barney was
down there, holed up and helpless, though he had grub and water.
Casey was up here in a mighty dangerous place without much grub
or water but--he hoped--not quite helpless. His immediate,
pressing job was not to peek through a high-up window at an old
woman rocking back and forth in a chair, but to round up the man
who was interfering with Casey's peaceful quest for--well, he