Page:Frederick Faust--Free Range Lanning.djvu/86

82 showed a wan face of excessive leanness, and lank hair that seemed damp straggling across his forehead. His eyes were deep under bony brows, and they alone of the features showed any expression as the game progressed, turning now and again to the other faces with glances that burned; he was winning steadily. A red-headed man was on his left, with his back to Andy; but now and again he turned, and Andy saw a heavy jowl and a skin blotched with great, rusty freckles. His shoulders overflowed the back of his chair, which creaked whenever he moved, and Andy knew the man was a veritable Hercules; when he dropped his arm the tips of his fingers brushed close to the floor.

The man who faced the redhead was as light as his companion was ponderous. He had frail hands and wrists, almost girlish; he was dressed also in a sort of feminine neatness and display; his voice was gentle, his eyes large and soft, and his profile was exceedingly handsome. But in the full view Andy saw nothing except a grisly, purple scar that twisted down beneath the right eye of the man. It drew down the lower lid of that eye, and it pulled the mouth of the man a bit awry, so that he seemed to be smiling in a smug, half-apologetic manner. In spite of his youth and his gentle manner he was unquestionably the dominant spirit here. Once or twice the others lifted their voices in argument, and a single word from him cut them short. And when he raised his head, now and again, to look at Andy, it gave the latter a feeling that his secret was read and all his past known.

These strange fellows had not asked his name, and neither had they introduced themselves, but from their table talk he gathered that the redhead was named Jeff, the funereal man with the bony face was Larry, the brown-haired one was Joe. and he of the scar and the