This was too foolish! I dismounted, dropped my horse's reins over his
head, and sauntered to the nearest figure. He was lost in the dusk of
the building and of his Mexican hat. I saw only the gleam of eyes.

"Where will I find Mr. Hooper?" I asked.

The figure waved a long, slim hand toward a wicket gate in one side of
the enclosure. He said no word, nor made another motion; and the other
figures sat as though graved from stone.

After a moment's hesitation I pushed open the wicket gate, and so found
myself in a smaller intimate courtyard of most surprising character. Its
centre was green grass, and about its border grew tall, bright flowers.
A wide verandah ran about three sides. I could see that in the numerous
windows hung white lace curtains. Mind you, this was in Arizona of the
'nineties!

I knocked at the nearest door, and after an interval it opened and I
stood face to face with Old Man Hooper himself.

He proved to be as small as I had thought, not taller than my own
shoulder, with a bent little figure dressed in wrinkled and baggy store
clothes of a snuff brown. His bullet head had been cropped so that his
hair stood up like a short-bristled white brush. His rather round face
was brown and lined. His hands, which grasped the doorposts
uncompromisingly to bar the way, were lean and veined and old. But all
that I found in my recollections afterward to be utterly unimportant.
His eyes were his predominant, his formidable, his compelling
characteristic. They were round, the pupils very small, the irises large
and of a light flecked blue. From the pupils radiated fine lines. The