The trip in was a painful one for Bill Gregg.  For one thing the exhaustion of the long three days’ trip was now causing a wave of weariness to sweep over him.  The numbness, which had come through the leg immediately after the shooting, was now replaced by a steady and continued aching.  And more than all he was unnerved by the sense of utter failure, utter loss.  Never in his life had he fought so bitterly and steadily for a thing, and yet he had lost at the very verge of success.

Chapter Three

At Stillwater

The true story was, of course, known almost at once, but, since Ronicky Doone swore that he would tackle the first man who accused him of having shot down Bill Gregg, the talk was confined to whispers.  In the meantime Stillwater rejoiced in its possession of Ronicky Doone.  Beyond one limited section of the mountain desert he was not as yet known, but he had one of those personalities which are called electric.  Whatever he did seemed greater because he, Ronicky Doone, had done it.

Not that he had done a great many things as yet.  But there was a peculiar feeling in the air that Ronicky Doone was capable of great and strange performances.  Men older than he were willing to accept him as their leader; men younger than he idolized him.

Ronicky Doone, then, the admired of all beholders, is leaning in the doorway of Stillwater’s second and best hotel.  His bandanna today is a terrific yellow, set off with crimson half-moon and stars strewn liberally on it.  His shirt is merely white, but it is given some significance by having nearly half of a red silk handkerchief falling out of the breast pocket.  His sombrero is one of those works of art which Mexican families pass from father to son, only his was new and had not yet received that limp effect of age.  And, like the gaudiest Mexican head piece, the band of this sombrero was of purest gold, beaten into the forms of various saints.  Ronicky Doone knew nothing at all about saints, but he approved very much of the animation of the martyrdom scenes and felt reasonably sure that his hatband could not be improved upon in the entire length and breadth of Stillwater, and the young men of the town agreed with him, to say nothing of the girls.

They also admired his riding gloves which, a strange affectation in a country of buckskin, were always the softest and the smoothest and the most comfortable kid that could be obtained.

Truth to tell, he did not handle a rope.  He could not tell the noose end of a lariat from the straight end, hardly.  Neither did Ronicky Doone know the slightest thing about barbed wire, except how to cut it when he wished to ride through.  Let us look closely at the hands themselves, as Ronicky stands in the door of the hotel and stares at the people walking by.  For he has taken off his gloves and he now rolls a cigarette.

They are very long hands.  The fingers are extremely slender and tapering.  The wrists are round and almost as innocent of sinews as the wrists of a woman, save when he grips something, and then how they stand out.  But, most remarkable of all, the skin of the palms of those hands is amazingly soft.  It is truly as soft as the skin of the hand of a girl.