Explore "Out of the Blue" by Bertrand W. Sinclair on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
He had been given forty-eight hours! When twenty-four of them had elapsed, Rock lay in his bunk at the TL, staring at roof beams dim above his head. The small noises of the night, insect voices, and the river's eternal whisper drifted through an open window. In an opposite corner the two hired men snored. Perhaps to-morrow something would happen. Perhaps not. Yet Rock could not take easy refuge behind the idea that Buck Walters' talk had been a bluff. Fire burned under that smoke. To-morrow would tell the tale.
Sunrise came and breakfast. Rock set the men at work in a meadow. The whir of the mower blades droned in the quiet valley. There were odds and ends of work that kept him busy until ten o'clock. While he attended to these jobs, he debated with himself whether to tell Nona Parke about his encounter with Buck. He concluded to keep it to himself. He wished that he had taken advantage of Dave Wells' presence to establish his own identity. Yet who the devil, he asked himself fretfully, would have expected Buck Walters to declare open war?