be called a mark of beauty, and when he took off his hat, which was not often except at mealtime and when he slept in a real bed, there was something very attractive about his forehead and the way his hair grew on his temples.  His mouth was pleasant when his mood was pleasant, but that was not always.  One front tooth had been gold-crowned, which made his smile a trifle conspicuous, but could not be called a disfigurement.  For the rest, he was tanned to a real desert copper, and riding kept him healthily lean.  But as I said before, you would never pick him out of a crowd as the hero of this story or of any other.

Like most of us, Starr did not dazzle at the first sight.  One must come into close contact with him to find him different from any other passably attractive, intelligent man of the open.  Oh, if you must have his age, I think he gave it at thirty-one, the last time he was asked, but he might have said twenty-five and been believed.  He was bashful, and he got on better with men than he did with women; but if you will stop to think, most decent men do if they have lived under their hats since they grew to the long-trouser age.  And if they have spent their working days astride a stock saddle, you may be sure they are bashful unless they are overbold and impossible.  Well, Starr was of the bashful, easily stampeded type.  As to his morals, he smoked and he swore a good deal upon occasion, and he drank, and he played pool, and now and then a little poker, and he would lie for a friend any time it was necessary and think nothing of it.  Also, he would fight whenever the occasion seemed to warrant it.  He had not been to church since he wore square collars starched and spread across his shoulders, and the shine of soap on his cheeks.  And a pretty girl would better not make eyes too boldly if she objected to being kissed, although Starr had never in his life asked a girl to marry him.

It doesn’t sound very promising for a hero.  He really was just a human being and no saint.  Saint?  You wouldn’t think so if you had heard what he said to his horse, Rabbit, just about an hour before you were introduced to him.

Rabbit, it seems had been pacing along, half asleep in the blistering heat of midday, among the cactus and the greasewood and those depressing, yellowish weeds that pretend to be clothing the desert with verdure, when they are merely emphasizing its barrenness.  Starr had been half asleep too, riding with one leg over the saddle horn to rest his muscles, and with his hat brim pulled down over his eyebrows to shade his eyes from the pitiless glare of New Mexico sunlight.  Rabbit might be depended upon to dodge the prairie dog holes and rocks and dirt hummocks, day or night, waking or sleeping; and since they were riding cross-country anyway, miles from a trail, and since they were headed for water, and Rabbit knew as well as Starr just where it was to be found, Starr held the reins slack in his thumb and finger and let the horse alone.