At first glance he was a sorry figure. He was lean and gaunt and looked
taller than he was for that reason. His face was deeply sun tanned and
seamed. He looked a rough, hard-working old farmer. The decided stoop
of his shoulders gave the exaggerated impression of age. His face was
shaved. He wore a coarse cotton shirt, a clean one that had just been
stolen from Bernard's store. It was partly covered by a vest. His hat
was an old slouched felt, well worn. In general appearance he was
dilapidated, dusty, and soiled.

The young officer was too keen a judge of character to be deceived
by clothes on a Western frontier. The dusty clothes and worn hat he
scarcely saw. It was the terrible mouth that caught and held his
imagination. It was the mouth of a relentless foe. It was the mouth of a
man who might speak the words of surrender when cornered. But he could
no more surrender than he could jump out of his skin.

Stuart was willing to risk his life on a wager that if he consented to
lay down his arms, he had more concealed and that he would sleep on them
that night in the brush.

The low forehead and square, projecting chin caught and held his fancy.
It was the jaw and chin of the fighting animal. No man who studied that
jaw would care to meet it in the dark.

But the thing that had put the Deputy out of commission as warrant
officer of the Government was the old man's strange, restless eyes.
Stuart caught their steel glitter with a sense of the uncanny. He
had never seen a human eye that threw at an enemy a look quite so
disconcerting. He had laughed at the Deputy's fear to move with fifty
dragoons to back him. There was some excuse for it. Back of those
piercing points of steel-blue light were one hundred and fifty armed
followers. What would happen if he should turn to these men and tell
them to fight the cavalry of the United States? It was an open question.

The old man walked toward his men with wiry, springing step.

The prisoners were released.

Stuart shook hands with Pate, who was a Virginian and a former student
of the University.

Brown's men laid down their arms and dispersed.

True to Stuart's surmise he did not move far from his entrenched camp.
He anticipated a fake surrender to the troops. He had concealed weapons
for the faithful but half a mile away. With Weiner he built a new camp
fire before Stuart's cavalry had moved two miles.

CHAPTER XXIII

The man with the slouched hat and coar