He was of medium height, slender, dark. He was taciturn to the point of monosyllabic conversation, and the perpetual, smiling sneer on his face had gotten on Red Owen’s nerves.
“Since he’s joined the outfit, he’s opened his yap about three times a day—usual at grub time, when if a man loosens up at all, he’ll loosen up then,” Red told Taylor, glaring his disapproval. “I’ve got an idea that I’ve seen the cuss somewheres before, but I ain’t able to place him.”
“His mug looks like he was soured on the world—especial himself. If I had a twistin’ upper lip like that, I’d sure plant some whiskers on it. A mustache, now, would hide a lot of the hyena in him.”
Owen stared meditatively at the new man through the flames. “Yes,” he said expressionlessly, “a mustache would make him look a whole lot different.” He was straining his mental faculties in an effort to remember a man of his acquaintance who possessed a lower lip like that of the man opposite him, eyes with the same expression in them, and a nose that was similar. He did not succeed, for memory was laggard, or his imagination was playing him a trick. He had worried over the man’s face since the first time he had seen it.
He heaved a deep breath now, and looked perplexedly into the flames. “It’s like a word that gits onto the end of your tongue when your brain-box ain’t got sense enough to shuck it out,” he remarked, lowly. “But I’ll git it, some time—if I don’t go loco frettin’ about it.”
“What you figger on gettin’—a new job?” asked Taylor, who had been sinking into a nap.
“Snakes!” sneered Owen.
“Thank yu’, I don’t want ’em,” grinned Taylor with ineffable gentleness, as he again closed his eyes.
Owen surveyed him with cold scorn. Owen’s temper, because of his inability to make his memory do his bidding, was sadly out of order. He had been longing for days to make the new man talk, that he might be enabled to sharpen his memory on the man’s words.
He studied the man again. He had been studying him all day, while he and some more of the men had worked the cattle out of some timber near the foothills, to the edge of the basin—where they were now camped. But the face was still elusive. If he could only get the man to talking, to watch the working of that lower lip!