Toothy was a little man, so stubborn, they said, that he even refused
to let the sun brown his skin. Instead of being the coppery hue of his
companions, the parchment-like stuff drawn tight over his high
cheek-bones was a dirty yellow. His eyes were small, set close
together, and squinted eternally in a sort of mirthless grin. His
teeth, which had given him his name, were the most conspicuous of his
odd features. The two front incisors of his upper jaw protruded
outward so as to close when his mouth was shut--and generally it
wasn't--over his lower lip. He was the smallest man on the range and
by long odds the ugliest. But he could ride!
Conniston was sorry to be separated from Lonesome Pete, the only man
of the outfit with whom he spoke a dozen words a day, the only man who
did not treat him as a rank outsider and an alien. But, on the other
hand, he was glad that he was to be given a respite from the
blistering wires of the cross-fence, that he was to be given change of
work. And when he learned what the work was he was doubly glad. The
three men were to ride twenty miles from the bunk-house to the lower
corrals of the Lone Dog to gather up a herd of steers there and drive
them across to the Sunk Hole. It would mean long hours in the saddle,
but Conniston told himself that riding, urging on lagging cattle,
would be almost rest after the drudgery of the last four days.
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