The trip in was a painful one for Bill Gregg.
For one thing the exhaustion of the long three days’
trip was now causing a wave of weariness to sweep
over him. The numbness, which had come through
the leg immediately after the shooting, was now replaced
by a steady and continued aching. And more than
all he was unnerved by the sense of utter failure,
utter loss. Never in his life had he fought so
bitterly and steadily for a thing, and yet he had
lost at the very verge of success.
At Stillwater
The true story was, of course, known almost at once,
but, since Ronicky Doone swore that he would tackle
the first man who accused him of having shot down
Bill Gregg, the talk was confined to whispers.
In the meantime Stillwater rejoiced in its possession
of Ronicky Doone. Beyond one limited section
of the mountain desert he was not as yet known, but
he had one of those personalities which are called
electric. Whatever he did seemed greater because
he, Ronicky Doone, had done it.
Not that he had done a great many things as yet.
But there was a peculiar feeling in the air that Ronicky
Doone was capable of great and strange performances.
Men older than he were willing to accept him as their
leader; men younger than he idolized him.
Ronicky Doone, then, the admired of all beholders,
is leaning in the doorway of Stillwater’s second
and best hotel. His bandanna today is a terrific
yellow, set off with crimson half-moon and stars strewn
liberally on it. His shirt is merely white, but
it is given some significance by having nearly half
of a red silk handkerchief falling out of the breast
pocket. His sombrero is one of those works of
art which Mexican families pass from father to son,
only his was new and had not yet received that limp
effect of age. And, like the gaudiest Mexican
head piece, the band of this sombrero was of purest
gold, beaten into the forms of various saints.
Ronicky Doone knew nothing at all about saints, but
he approved very much of the animation of the martyrdom
scenes and felt reasonably sure that his hatband could
not be improved upon in the entire length and breadth
of Stillwater, and the young men of the town agreed
with him, to say nothing of the girls.
They also admired his riding gloves which, a strange
affectation in a country of buckskin, were always
the softest and the smoothest and the most comfortable
kid that could be obtained.
Truth to tell, he did not handle a rope. He could
not tell the noose end of a lariat from the straight
end, hardly. Neither did Ronicky Doone know the
slightest thing about barbed wire, except how to cut
it when he wished to ride through. Let us look
closely at the hands themselves, as Ronicky stands
in the door of the hotel and stares at the people
walking by. For he has taken off his gloves and
he now rolls a cigarette.
They are very long hands. The fingers are extremely
slender and tapering. The wrists are round and
almost as innocent of sinews as the wrists of a woman,
save when he grips something, and then how they stand
out. But, most remarkable of all, the skin of
the palms of those hands is amazingly soft. It
is truly as soft as the skin of the hand of a girl.
