B. M. Bower

“ For, though Burney's strength was prodigious, the strength of this other was something monstrous. Burney was being beaten back step by step, inch by inch; he was being borne down. Great sweat drops stood on his face. His teeth were clenched in a frozen snarl of supreme physical effort. His knees were bending slowly, slowly—his back was yielding. The huge, hairy hands of the Thing were reaching, reaching—the great talonlike fingers were spread and tensed for the death clutch. The snarl broke suddenly into a scream to freeze one's blood ”

“ CHAPTER XVI. When a man has spent nearly all his life in the midst of great, open spaces, certain of his faculties attain a high state of development—unless he is one of those incompetents who never does grow up to the requirements of his vocation. Spider was not an incompetent; he had learned to see a great deal in a short space of time, and to rise instinctively to an emergency. Though he had lost Vida in the cañon it was because he had not suspected her of deliberately trying to evade him and so had kept to the logical course, which was up the main ravine. ”

“ Burney lifted his chin from his heaving chest, and stared somberly at the dead. "Sure, I knowed about him," he admitted dismally. "I never knowed he was dangerous, though—till he commenced killin' sheep. Even then I didn't think he'd—tackle a human being. He's—always been harmless. Just—simple-minded and wantin' to live around in caves like an animal. He never hurt nobody—before. It must 'a' just growed on him, kinda, from killin' them—sheep." ”

“ I was in Pocatello to see a doctor and try and find out what could be done fer him—I'd heard about operations on the brain that'd change a person, and I didn't know but what something could be done with him to make him quieter and keep him from wantin' to kill. ”

“ She ain't right in her mind, and she packs a knife. She might——" He did not feel that it was necessary to finish that sentence.
Spider stood sober-eyed, and watched Burney gather into his huge arms that monstrous shape of a man, and go staggering to the edge of the rock huddle. He watched him part the bushes in a certain place with one hand, pause a minute there to make sure of his footing, and go down slowly, surely, like a man feeling his way down a crude stairway, bearing the limp Thing with the frozen snarl on its beastlike face. ”