Burning Daylight eBook

Nor did his looks belie his reputation and his manner.

Physically, he guaranteed all that Daylight knew of him.  Despite his sixty years and snow-white hair, his hand-shake was firmly hearty, and he showed no signs of decrepitude, walking with a quick, snappy step, making all movements definitely and decisively.  His skin was a healthy pink, and his thin, clean lips knew the way to writhe heartily over a joke.  He had honest blue eyes of palest blue; they looked out at one keenly and frankly from under shaggy gray brows.  His mind showed itself disciplined and orderly, and its workings struck Daylight as having all the certitude of a steel trap.  He was a man who knew and who never decorated his knowledge with foolish frills of sentiment or emotion.  That he was accustomed to command was patent, and every word and gesture tingled with power.  Combined with this was his sympathy and tact, and Daylight could note easily enough all the earmarks that distinguished him from a little man of the Holdsworthy caliber.  Daylight knew also his history, the prime old American stock from which he had descended, his own war record, the John Dowsett before him who had been one of the banking buttresses of the Cause of the Union, the Commodore Dowsett of the War of 1812 the General Dowsett of Revolutionary fame, and that first far Dowsett, owner of lands and slaves in early New England.

“He’s sure the real thing,” he told one of his fellow-clubmen afterwards, in the smoking-room of the Alta-Pacific.  “I tell you, Gallon, he was a genuine surprise to me.  I knew the big ones had to be like that, but I had to see him to really know it.  He’s one of the fellows that does things.  You can see it sticking out all over him.  He’s one in a thousand, that’s straight, a man to tie to.  There’s no limit to any game he plays, and you can stack on it that he plays right up to the handle.  I bet he can lose or win half a dozen million without batting an eye.”

Gallon puffed at his cigar, and at the conclusion of the panegyric regarded the other curiously; but Daylight, ordering cocktails, failed to note this curious stare.

“Going in with him on some deal, I suppose,” Gallon remarked.

“Nope, not the slightest idea.  Here’s kindness.  I was just explaining that I’d come to understand how these big fellows do big things.  Why, d’ye know, he gave me such a feeling that he knew everything, that I was plumb ashamed of myself.”

“I guess I could give him cards and spades when it comes to driving a dog-team, though,” Daylight observed, after a meditative pause.  “And I really believe I could put him on to a few wrinkles in poker and placer mining, and maybe in paddling a birch canoe.  And maybe I stand a better chance to learn the game he’s been playing all his life than he would stand of learning the game I played up North.”

CHAPTER II