As each man passed him Flannagan scrutinized his face,
and it was not until they had all emerged and he had reentered
the room with a light that he discovered that once
again his quarry had eluded him. Detective Sergeant Flannagan
was peeved.
The sun smote down upon a dusty road. A heat-haze lay
upon the arid land that stretched away upon either hand
toward gray-brown hills. A little adobe hut, backed by a few
squalid outbuildings, stood out, a screaming high-light in its
coat of whitewash, against a background that was garish with
light.
Two men plodded along the road. Their coats were off, the
brims of their tattered hats were pulled down over eyes closed
to mere slits against sun and dust.
One of the men, glancing up at the distant hut, broke into
verse:
Yet then the sun was shining down, a-blazing on the little town,
A mile or so 'way down the track a-dancing in the sun.
But somehow, as I waited there, there came a shiver in the air,
"The birds are flying south," he said. "The winter has begun."
His companion looked up at him who quoted.
"There ain't no track," he said, "an' that 'dobe shack don't
look much like a town; but otherwise his Knibbs has got our
number all right, all right.
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