Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/114



LOSE by the kitchen door where Alvino cooked and spread his salted foods, there stood a rude bench made of half a cedar log, the altar of ablution where the cowboys lined up and snorted like drowning horses over tin wash pans morning and night. As Barrett approached the cabin, a man rose from rinsing the dust of a long ride from his face and neck, calling loudly for a towel.

Alvino tossed the article demanded through the door, whence issued a stream of blue smoke from the burning grease of the midday bacon. This towel was half a grain sack, stiff with the accumulated dirt of weeks, the standing joke of the camp. The stranger turned it in his hands as if in the hope of finding a clear spot, cast it from him with a curse, drew a handkerchief half as big as a tablecloth from his pocket and began wiping his face. As he worked he leaned toward the kitchen door and poured a stream of Mexican upon Alvino, who could be seen dimly going about in his smoke.

At the sound of Barrett's coming the fellow turned from his abuse of the cook with a quick, wheeling start that crunched the gravel under his pivoted heel. The handkerchief he clutched in one hand, the other he dropped to his dangling pistol.

He was a tall, harshly built man of coarse, heavy, negroid features. There was a glow of ruddiness in his