"We'd sort of got used to the meanness of the Cross-Roads.

It took a stranger to stir things up--and he did.

He sent eight of 'em to the penitentiary, some for twenty years." As they passed the saloon a man stepped into the doorway and looked at them.

He was coatless and clad in garments worn to the color of dust; his bare head was curiously malformed, higher on one side than on the other, and though the buckboard passed rapidly, and at a distance, this singular lopsidedness was plainly visible to the occupants, lending an ugly significance to his meagre, yellow face.

He was tall, lean, hard, powerfully built.