Page:The Trail Rider (1924).pdf/17

 ened in the door between him and the bright, glaring day. Uncle Boley looked up from his seam, sighing as he relinquished the sweet thoughts of the distant widow whom he had never seen, nodded to the man, who had paused in his door as if for permission to enter, worked his chin rapidly in short chops to dislodge the chew of tobacco between his jawbone and his cheek. This operation gave an aspect of menace to the venerable bootmaker's otherwise placid face, which a stranger was very likely to interpret as a prelude to a volley of invective, in keeping with the customs of Cottonwood and the wild men who rode that untrammeled land.

"Come in," said Uncle Boley, a little thickly on account of the waxed-end that he held in his mouth. The man stretched out his arm and, with palm against the jamb of the door, stood as one does when he has been on his feet a long time, shifting his weight from leg to leg, and grinned dustily at Uncle Boley.

Telling about it afterward, when there was reason for it and distinction in it, Uncle Boley always said that grin reminded him of the way a strange dog stops to wag its tail and looks up at you. There was something half-timid, wholly uncertain, in the unspoken salutation, yet an appeal of friendliness that made a man want to shake