The old hermit was dressed in a collection of filthy rags, apparently secured from all sources, for no two pieces matched. A long gray beard hung almost to his waist, and out of the hairy growth which half covered his face his eyes glowed like two coals of fire. However, he did not appear half so formidable as he looked, and the boys concluded that the old hermit of the yucca waste would be an interesting character to study.
Mad Mat invited them cordially enough into his shack, and opened the door to them with as consequential a flourish of his hand as if this had been the dwelling place of an emperor. He lived, so he told them, by tending his little flock of sheep, most of which, so rumor in that part of the country had it, had been stolen from passing herds.
However that might be, Mad Mat was able to set forth some excellent mutton before his hungry guests, and, although the surroundings were not suited to the fastidious, the boys had roughed it too much in the southwest to be over–particular.
They found Mad Mat talkative on every subject but himself. In fact, when Ralph asked him where he came from the old man became quite angry and glared at them out of his beard like an “owl in an ivy bush,” as Ralph put it afterward.
Jack found an opportunity to draw Ralph aside and warned him that it was not good policy in that country to ask personal questions of strangers.
“Most of these odd characters of the plains have a reason for being out here which they don’t like to talk about,” he said.
By way of changing the subject, Walt turned to that safe topic, the weather.
“You evidently haven’t had much rain here lately?” he said.
“Nope,” rejoined Mad Mat in his odd, jerky way of talking; “no rain. No rain for a year.”