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He laid the glasses across his knees while he refilled his pipe, and tilted his hatbrim to shield his pale blue eyes from the sun that was sliding past midday. H. J. Owens looked at his watch, nevertheless, as though the position of the sun meant nothing to him. He scowled a little, stretched a leg straight out before him to ease it of cramp, and afterwards moved farther along in the shade.
A few more steps brought eye as well as ear back to the living world with the sight of a girl seated on a bowlder. He could see nothing of her face except the cheek, which was brown, and the tip of a chin, which he guessed was oval, and her hair, which was dark under her hatbrim and shimmering with gold where it was kissed by the rays of the sun.
Along this stretch of railroad the mountaineers come to the stations wearing the distinctive costume of their own craggy and slabsided hills the curling pheasant feather in the hatbrim; the tight-fitting knee-breeches; the gaudy stockings; and the broad-suspendered belt with rows of huge brass buttons spangling it up and down and crosswise.
The object of all four was obviously to get beyond easy rifle range of the rushing train before drawing rein to reconnoitre, and now, probably noting that the engine was driving on full speed, with no sign of stopping, the tall horseman in the lead circled swiftly to his right, along the crest of a low ridge perhaps three hundred yards away, then peered from under his broad hatbrim at the supposed enemy.
He marked him well. He was of middle size, a tall man among the little Kakisas, with a great shock of hair cut off like a Dutchman's at the neck. On the way over Ambrose was greatly astonished to feel his sleeve gently plucked. He studied the men beside him, and finally made out Tole under his flaring hatbrim. Into his ear he whispered: "I told you to go home."
And the rider turned his head, eyed the girl sharply as she came up, and nodded a cursory greeting. His horse lifted its head to look, decided that it wanted another swallow or two, and lowered its muzzle again to the water. Billy Louise could not form any opinion of the man's age or personality, for he was encased in a wolfskin coat which covered him completely from hatbrim to ankles.
"Bridgeport," returned Miss Bryant, grinning benevolently on the wedding guests, her wet hair clinging about her face, her shirt waist dampened with the raindrops that trickled from her hatbrim. "Driving an antelope to a racing sulky. If I bear marks, y'ought to see the antelope; and the sulky! Seven column picture, Kitty; I've made a lay-out.
La, do you really think me as base as that?" Now Simon Orts was kneeling at her side. The black cloak enveloped her from head to foot, and the turned-up collar screened her sunny hair; in the shadow of the broad hatbrim you could see only her eyes, resplendent and defiant, and in them the reflection of the vaulting flames. "You would stay, Anastasia?"
But beyond this one faint cry, Jessie, stanch little partner, the girl behind the lines, said no more to hinder him now, as she watched the scout detach his little lamp from his hatbrim and hook it on to his khaki breast. With it glowing there, a headlight for his gallant heart, Stud set himself to climb.
Persicos odi, Anastasia; 'tis a humiliating reflection that the hair of a dead woman artfully disposed about a living head should have the power to set men squabbling, and murder be at times engendered in a paint-pot. However, wrap yourself in the cloak. Now turn up the collar, so. Now pull down the hatbrim. Um a pretty well. Chance favors us unblushingly.
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