"It is so sinister!" she exclaimed. "And so unspeakably mean! This is
where they live, the people who hate him, is it? The 'White-Caps'?"

"They are just a lot of rowdies," replied Briscoe. "You have your rough
corners in big cities, and I expect there are mighty few parts of any
country that don't have their tough neighborhoods, only Six-Cross-Roads
happens to be worse than most. They choose to call themselves 'White-
Caps,' but I guess it's just a name they like to give themselves. Usually
White-Caps are a vigilance committee going after rascalities the law
doesn't reach, or won't reach, but these fellows are not that kind. They
got together to wipe out their grudges--and sometimes they didn't need any
grudge and let loose their deviltries just for pure orneriness; setting
haystacks afire and such like; or, where a farmer had offended them, they
would put on their silly toggery and take him out at midnight and whip him
and plunder his house and chase the horses and cattle into his corn,
maybe. They say the women went with them on their raids."

"And he was the first to try to stop them?"

"Well, you see our folks are pretty long-suffering," Briscoe replied,
apologetically. "We'd sort of got used to the meanness of the Cross-Roads.
It took a stranger to stir things up--and he did. He sent eight of 'em to
the penitentiary, some for twenty years."

As they passed the saloon a man stepped into the doorway and looked at
them. He was coatless and clad in garments worn to the color of dust; his
bare head was curiously malformed, higher on one side than on the other,
and though the buckboard passed rapidly, and at a distance, this singular
lopsidedness was plainly visible to the occupants, lending an ugly
significance to his meagre, yellow face. He was tall, lean, hard,