| hurry, and as a matter of fact, he usually was. His weight was about a hundred and thirty pounds, or a trifle more in winter, and a little less when the hot weather of the summer began to set in. It was not tough, well-seasoned muscle, either. It was quite flabby. And he had small bones, and little, narrow, nervous hands. |
| His eyes were pale, and rather nearsighted, so that he had a half-frightened look, when it wasn't simply wistfully inquiring. His pale forehead was constantly contorted with a frownwhich was not a frown of bad temper, but of eagerness. |
| The only truly remarkable thing about Sammy, indeed, was that same eagerness. Like the eagerness of a hunting ferretif you can imagine a ferret without teeth! But one felt about Sammy a vast earnestness, rooted as deep as the roots of his soul, a singular intentness in which he was absorbed. |
| That was the secret of the bigness that was in Sammy; for some bigness there was. The trouble was, the West and the people of the West, were not fitted for understanding this small man. |
| I suppose, for that matter, that he was a rarity in almost any climate. He had the simplicity of a child mixed oddly with some of the guile of a serpent, I am afraid. It was always very hard to understand Sammy. I, for one, never could pretend to hold the key to his complex nature. I can only describe him as he was. |
| In the first place, he did not come West to raise cattle nor horses, nor to ride herd on the cow range, nor to dig gold for himself nor any other, |
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