Word: curtness
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Hunter & Hunted. Daughter Grace is a cowed, bloodless spinster who lavishes her love on brother Arthur, a Christlike embodiment of human goodness, an unambitious whittler of 40 who won't shoot a gun. Riding roughshod over the entire family is another son, Curt, a hard-bodied, dead-shot, ambitious, bully who loves hunting and the kill. On the morning the story opens, he is consumed by two desires: to track down the destructive mountain lion at large among the Bridges cattle; to seduce Gwen, the fiancee of brother Harold...
...Curt goes after the panther first, bullies gentle Arthur into going along. Miles from the ranch house, they find the tracks of an enormous cat. When Curt goes back to get supplies for the pursuit, daydreaming Arthur is jumped by the panther and killed. Gnawed by guilt, Curt sends back his brother's body lashed to a horse, takes off on foot to track down...
...repressed passion, recriminations and superstitious maundering that Novelist Clark's meager story structure is too fragile to bear. What happens out on the snow-covered range is more successful and easily the most exciting part of the book. In a first-rate section of more than 100 pages, Curt's pursuit of the cat becomes a thriller with symbolic moral overtones that will remind some readers of Moby Dick. The cunning of the cat, the cold, the lack of food, the growing image in Curt's mind of the panther as the embodiment of sinister evil...
...Navy's postwar battle with the Air Force ended abruptly last week, with the airmen slow-rolling overhead in triumphant victory. Less than a week after the centerplates had been dropped into the keel of the 65,000-ton supercarrier United States, Defense Secretary Louis Johnson issued a curt order "discontinuing construction of the vessel . . . at the least possible cost to the Government."" The decision meant only one thing: from now on the Air Force will take care of long-range strategic bombing; the Navy will be. held to the job of keeping the overseas supply lines open...
...likely to soar to $100 million and the union could make more money by putting it out in bank loans than by drawing interest on it as a deposit. But when newsmen asked Lewis if he was now a banker, all they got was a faraway look and a curt: "No comment...