Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/27

 Dan Gustin did not know that nations attired their defenders of the seas in that manner; to him the sight of this sailor, a thousand miles and more from the nearest salt sea, brought no association of romance or adventure, or of white cruisers lifting to the placid lap of swelling waters in far-off San Francisco bay. The stranger was an amazing freak, parading with an affrontery that Dan resented. Dan remembered having seen a girl in a show down at Cheyenne one time, dressed in that fashion. Maybe this was the explanation. There must be a show in town.

Quickened by this thought and hope, Dan approached the window where the white wolf stood, its grizzly muzzle wrinkled in a fearful snarl which the serene blue eyes turned into nothing more than a bluff and a false pretense.

"I ketch 'em alive with my bare hands," the man who argued with the one Dan took for a walking advertisement declared, putting it rather roughly, in loud and quarrelsome words. "I'm here to tell you, little feller, I know wolf. I'm kin to 'em."

"I'm not sayin' you don't, mister," the other returned, mild and unruffled, but with a firmness that surprised Dan. "You asked me for my opinion on that beast's eyes, and I gave it to you."

"It ain't worth hell room!" the contentious man declared, glaring in bristling ferocity on the sailor.

This man who claimed kinship with the outlawed tribe was a thin-shouldered, narrow-chested person, standing gangling and tall, but with a roughness about him like a cactus, promising unpleasantness in handling.