He was a great, dark man, his skin darkly brown from exposure; his straight hair showed almost coal black in spite of the fact that it had but recently been clipped close; his eyebrows were similarly black; and black hairs spread down his hands almost to the finger nails and cropped up from his chest at his open throat.  It was a mighty, deep, full chest, the chest of a runner and a fighter, sustained by a strong, flat abdomen and by powerful, sturdy legs.  Yet physical might and development were not all of Ben Kinney.  The image conveyed was never one of sheer brutality.  For all their black hair, the large, brawny hands were well-shaped and sensitive; he had a healthy, good-humored mouth that could evidently, on occasion, be the seat of a most pleasant, boyish smile.  He had a straight, good nose, rather high cheek bones, and a broad, brown forehead, straight rather than sloping swiftly like that of the negro opposite.  But none of his features, nor yet his brawny form, caught and held the attention as did his vivid, dark-gray eyes.  They were deeply dark, even against his deeply tanned face, yet now and then one caught distinct surface lights, denoting the presence of unmeasured animal spirits, and perhaps, too, the surprising health and vitality of the engine of his life.  They were keen eyes, alert, fiery with a zealot’s fire:  evidently the eyes of a steadfast, headstrong, purposeful man.  Some complexity of lines about them, hard to trace, indicated a recklessness, too; a willingness to risk all that he had for his convictions.

“That’s the queerest case we ever had here at Walla Walla,” Sprigley told his fellow guard, as they watched the man’s pick swing in the air.  “Sometimes I wonder whether he ought to be here or not.  Look at that face—­he hasn’t any more of a criminal face than I have.”

The other guard, Howard, scanned his companion’s face with mock care.  “That ain’t sayin’ so much for him,” he observed.  But at once he began to evince real interest.  “I maintain you can’t tell anything from their faces,” he answered seriously.  “There’s nothin’ in it.  The man’s a crook, isn’t he?  Wasn’t he caught red-handed?”

“Let me tell you about it.  I was interested in the case and found out all I could concerning it.  He apparently showed up in Seattle some time during the summer of 1919, a crook of the crooks, as you say.  No one knows where he came from—­and that’s queer in itself.  You know very well that his face and form are going to be remembered and noticed, yet he wasn’t in any rogue’s gallery, in any city.  Desperate crook though he was, no one had ever heard of him before he showed up in Seattle.