coffee was made in a blacker, spoutless, battered, dirty-looking
coffee-pot Roger Hapgood put out a hand, uninvited, for the tin cup.

Conniston, his appetite being a shade further removed from starvation
than his friend's, divided his interest equally between the meal and
the man preparing it. He found his host an anomaly. In spite of the
fiery coloring of mustache and hair he was one of the meekest-looking
individuals Conniston had ever seen, and certainly the most
soft-spoken. His eyes had a way of losing their brightness as he fell
to staring away into vacancy, his lips working as though he were
repeating a prayer over and over to himself. The growth upon his upper
lip had at first given him the air of a man of thirty, and now when
one looked at him it was certain he could not be a day over twenty.
And about his hips, dragging so low and fitting so loosely that
Conniston had always the uncomfortable sensation that it was going to
slip down about his feet, he wore a cartridge-belt and two heavy
forty-five revolvers. He gave one the feeling of a cherub with a
war-club.

During the scanty meal Lonesome Pete ate noisily and rapidly and spoke
little, contenting himself with short answers to the few questions
which were put to him, for the most part staring away into the
gathering night with an expression of great mildness upon his face.
Finishing some little time before his guests, he rolled a cigarette,
left them to polish out the frying-pan with the last morsels of bread,
and, going back to the buckboard, fumbled a moment in a second
soap-box under the seat. It was growing so dark now that, while they
could see him take two or three articles from his box and thrust them
under his arm, they could not make out what the things were. But in
another moment he had lighted the lantern which had swung under the