Page:The Coming of Cassidy and the Others - Clarence E. Mulford.djvu/58

 a moment. "Fine, big bodies—nothing else," he muttered. "Big children, with children's heads. A little courage, if steadied; but what a paucity of brains! Good G—d, what a paucity of brains; what a lack of original thought!"

Of some localities it is said their inhabitants do not die, but dry up and blow away; this, so far as appearances went, seemed true of the horseman who loped along the north bank of Snake Creek, only he had not arrived at the "blow away" period. No one would have guessed his age as forty, for his leathery, wrinkled skin, thin, sun-bleached hair and wizened body justified a guess of sixty. A shrewd observer looking him over would find about the man a subtle air of potential destruction, which might have been caused by the way he wore his guns. A second look and the observer would turn away oppressed by a disquieting feeling that evaded analysis by lurking annoyingly just beyond the horizon of thought. But a man strong in intuition would not have turned away; he