Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/102

 waiting while Dominguez fastened the chain. Dominguez parted the curtains, the stranger stepped into the light. Juan Molinero and Padre Mateo were seated at the side of the table, their faces toward the arched door, giving them a close view of the stranger as he set foot within the room.

The traveler was a man of medium stature, heavy in the shoulders with ungraceful strength, like a laborer; a swart man, with rough-modeled features, his face overgrown with the stubble of a thick black beard. His nose, very short and small, had an upturned end, as if nature had pushed him aside with impatient thumb after finding him unsatisfactory when finished. He was a pig-eyed, peon type of man, his black mustaches small and bristling, a leering sneer in his countenance as of one who resented his position in human affairs while lacking either the merit to justify advancement at other hands, or the ability to contrive it with his own.

For a traveler who had no more to defend than this man apparently carried about him, the stranger was well armed. In addition to a sabre which almost touched the floor as he stood, he carried four pistols, two on each side, in holsters attached to the broad belt buckled around his middle over the soiled yellow sash with green stripes, which hung in frayed tassels to his thigh. There was dust on his peaked sombrero, which he kept with ill-mannered boorishness on his head, dust on his embroidered short jacket, and in the creases at the knees of his tight-fitting buff velvet pantaloons, cut