PAINTED ROCK
turn, as one has to, and then, with a cigar in my teeth, I sat down on the other side of the room. The bar was on the right side as one entered. I hadn't smoked half the cigar, known, by the way, as a Havana-filler, when Ben Williams walked in and breasted the bar. He was almost the only man in the town who dared call for a lemonade without some remark being made, and he called for one now. As he drank it the evening drew in and the bar-tender lighted the lamps. I knew the man well by sight, and it was quite true, as the Colonel said, that he would make a handsome corpse. He stood very nearly six feet, and had a close-cropped dark beard which did not hide the cut of his strong chin and jaw. There was the look in his eyes which is common in all courageous men out West, only it was greatly accentuated in him. I own it was hard to look him squarely in the face for long. It would have been impossible save for the fact that, like all such men, his eyes seemed to take in the whole room as well as the man he was talking with. He dressed very quietly
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