Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/40

 rubbed off by wear; his coat, tattered and in shreds, was evidently part of a military uniform, the two brass buttons which remained on it bright in the candle beam. His boots of raw deerhide, hair outward, came to his knees; his cap, cut from the skin of a mountain lion, was crude and ill-fitting, large on his head as an oriental turban. It came down low on his forehead; an eagle feather was stuck into a slit with an attempt at the jaunty and debonnaire altogether ludicrous.

For all but the pale blue of the faded coat, the man appeared all hair. His beard was a golden flare on his brown cheeks, rippled like water that runs in shallows over a sunlit bar; his hair, of a strange fairness in the eyes of those who beheld him in amazement, fell to his shoulders in curls. He carried a gun with graceful lightness, the muzzle downward, the stock under his arm.

Borromeo Cambon leaned forward, hands on his thighs, mouth open, swallowing the wonder of this unaccountable stranger; Magdalena, still with hand clutching her husband's arm fearfully, stared with big eyes, her cheeks of a cold hue, her breath a gasp in her parted lips; Sergeant Olivera put his hand to his chin, where fingers and thumb stroked as if they felt for a beard, no emotion apparent in him but that of speculation on the reason for such a wild figure that seemed to have sprung out of the night. Don Geronimo rose, deliberately as became a dignified man at his own table, and went forward to speak to the man in the door.