roared, "this good man here is
Bowie."

A short, muscular, bowlegged man with a friendly grin, nodded his
head at them and cut off a piece of black tobacco with his knife,
stuffing it into his mouth, knife blade and all. Chris gave a shiver
as the blade went in and came out and Bowie champed contentedly on his
chew.

"This here's Elbert Jones," Cilley went on, "and that one's Abner
Cloud, and that one," pointed Ned, "that one's Zachary Heigh."

Chris smiled and nodded, or shook hands, and Amos followed suit, but
when they had reached Zachary, a tall young man of eighteen years or
so, Zachary bent his handsome surly face and fumbled at his shoe.
Chris stood there with his hand out, feeling the red blood surging
angrily up his cheeks, and then he wondered who Zachary was looking at
from the corner of his eye.

Chris turned his head and did not have to hear the name muttered by
Cilley or by Bowie at his back. Chris found himself staring at
Claggett Chew.

CHAPTER 13

Claggett Chew possessed a face and bearing not easily forgotten. A
giant of a man, standing well over six feet three, he stood bareheaded
in the morning sun. Contrary to the custom of the time, he wore no
pigtail at his neck, nor even hair caught back, tied with a bow.
Claggett Chew's head was shaved so close that the pale skin of his
skull showed through the peppery stubble, making him seem bald. Below
the bare skull, as if in counterbalance, his black eyebrows started
out, tangled and thickly black, and under them, as out of a rocky
cave, his small pale eyes blinked like cornered foxes in their dens.
His nose, overlarge to start with, had at some time in his life been
broken, and its crooked shape leaned to the right as if still bending
beneath the blow that had battered it.

[Illustration]

A long untrimmed mustache shadowed his mouth, and stray hairs caught
inside his lips when he opened and closed them. His lips, like his
eyes, were pale, and his skin sickly as that of a man who sees but
little of the light. His cheeks and chin were stubbly, like his
head; his beard seemed more reluctant than half grown. His whole
appearance, in his sallow yellow vest, gun-gray coat and breeches and
canary-colored stockings, was one of mingled power and weakness;
strength joined with an unhealthy habit of never being in the sun, and
a cruelty best enjoyed when he knew that he could win.

His cold eyes pinned Chris with their gaze as if the boy were a