that he had which made friends for him among old hardshells like the herder.
The old man chuckled; that pleased him very well. He made a cigarette, with admirable deftness considering his stiff fingers, dribbling a little stream of loose tobacco on his beard as he sat holding it unlit in his lips a while.
"Everybody knows old Al Clemmons, from the Rio Grande to the Little Missouri," he said. "I never—stole but four horses in my life, and that was so long ago the heirs of the men that owned 'em's all dead, nobody left to prosecute."
Rawlins felt the satirical exaggeration in this old fellow's account of himself and his friend of long ago, but was at a loss, naturally, to understand the purpose of it. Perhaps he laughed at the world when he seemed to laugh at himself, like that other ancient gentleman whose neglect of sanitary details brought him down to an undignified end at last.
Clemmons had not taken his hat off since coming in from his labors with the flock. He wore it tilted back a little, pressed down to his ears, a high-crowned hat of medium broad brim, a look of newness about it rather out of keeping with the rest of his garb. He took it off now, suddenly, as if he had remembered something hidden in it that might melt, and scratched his head with great vigor and a rasping sound.
The old man's hair was shaggy, thick and straight, and grey as dusty cobwebs. There was so much of it, suddenly revealed by the removal of his hat, standing up so high in front, that it gave him the appearance of being most shockingly surprised.
