As far as outward appearances went, Dorgan might have been a Sunday school superintendent.

Had he been one at heart, there would be no more story for me to tell.
But there were times when Dorgan could be forgotten.

With a crowd like that gathered on the Hanley Ranch, you can imagine the yarns there were to spin in the long evenings, with nothing to do but spin them.

Perhaps some of the tales those men didn't dare to tell--the secrets hidden behind their hardened faces, the faults, the crimes, the horrors that could have been revealed--these might have proved more thrilling than the stories that came forth; but that is something that neither you, nor Whitey, nor I will ever know.
The tales that were told there had the proper setting, and if you have thought much about stories you know what that means.

You tell a ghost story late at night, seated before a fireplace in an old country house.
The only light comes from the flames of the dying fire logs that flicker as the wind howls down the chimney; the only sounds, the beating of the rain on the walls and roof, and--during the creepy pauses in the yarn--the creakings that a lonely house gives out in the night hours.
Tell that same story on a sun-lighted June morning, in the orchard, when the trees are all in blossom.