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One day, arriving about the same time, but by different trails, two young chaps rode up to the Diamond-Cross ranch, on the Little Piedra, and asked for work. Both were dressed neatly and sprucely in cowboy costume. One was a straight-set fellow, with delicate, handsome features, short, brown hair, and smooth face, sunburned to a golden brown.

Far to the left moved the horsemen, the dust of their rapid passage hiding their galloping mounts up to the stirrup. To the watchers by the king they seemed like an undulant sea of quilted helmets and flying tassels, while the sunlight smote through a level and straight-set forest of spears. They were seasoned veterans, many of them heroes of a quarter-century of wars.

And now fight we with straight-set resolve and let there be no sparing of spears, that we may know whether Achilles is to slay us and carry our bloody spoils to the hollow ships, or whether he might be vanquished by thy spear." Thus saying Athene in her subtlety led him on.

All were light skinned hardly darker than the river-tanned whites themselves; all had straight-set eyes, with no hint of the slant often found among the Indians of the Amazon headwaters; and the cheek bones of all were fairly low. Their average stature was a little under six feet, and most of them had an athletic symmetry of physique. Their feet, McKay noticed, were small and shapely.