He landed almost on top of a fat-jowled
representative from Santa Fe, but he landed muzzle foremost, as it were,
and he was telling the twelve to put up their hands even before he had
his feet solidly planted on the floor.
Holman Sommers sat facing him. He had been writing, and he still held his
pencil in his hand. He slowly crumpled the sheet of paper, his vivid eyes
lifted to Starr's face. Tragic eyes they were then, for beyond Starr they
looked into the stern face of the government he would have defied. They
looked upon the wreck of his dearest dream; upon the tightening chains of
the wage slaves he would have freed--or so he dreamed.
Starr stared back, his own mind visioning swiftly the havoc he had
wrought in the dream of this leader of men. He saw, not a political
outlaw caught before he could do harm to his country, but a man fated to
bear in his great brain an idea born generations too soon into a brawling
world of ideas that warred always with sordid circumstance. A hundred
years hence this man might be called great. Now he was nothing more than
a political outlaw chief, trapped with his band of lesser outlaws.
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