ith crimson half-moon and stars strewn
liberally on it. His shirt is merely white, but it is given some
significance by having nearly half of a red silk handkerchief falling
out of the breast pocket. His sombrero is one of those works of art
which Mexican families pass from father to son, only his was new and
had not yet received that limp effect of age. And, like the gaudiest
Mexican head piece, the band of this sombrero was of purest gold,
beaten into the forms of various saints. Ronicky Doone knew nothing at
all about saints, but he approved very much of the animation of the
martyrdom scenes and felt reasonably sure that his hatband could not
be improved upon in the entire length and breadth of Stillwater, and
the young men of the town agreed with him, to say nothing of the
girls.

They also admired his riding gloves which, a strange affectation in a
country of buckskin, were always the softest and the smoothest and the
most comfortable kid that could be obtained.

Truth to tell, he did not handle a rope. He could not tell the noose
end of a lariat from the straight end, hardly. Neither did Ronicky
Doone know the slightest thing about barbed wire, except how to cut
it when he wished to ride through. Let us look closely at the hands
themselves, as Ronicky stands in the door of the hotel and stares at
the people walking by. For he has taken off his gloves and he now
rolls a cigarette.

They are very long hands. The fingers are extremely slender and
tapering. The wrists are round and almost as innocent of sinews as the
wrists of a woman, save when he grips something, and then how they
stand out. But, most remarkable of all, the skin of the palms of those
hands is amazingly soft. It is truly as soft as the skin of the hand
of a girl.

There were some who shook their heads when they saw those hands. There
were some who inferred that Ronicky Doone was little better than a
scapegrace, and that, in reality, he had never done a better or more
useful thing than handle cards and swing a revolver. In both of which
arts it was admitted that he was incredibly dexterous. As a matter
of fact, since there was no estate from which he drew an income, and
since he had never been known in the entire history of his young life
to do a single stroke of productive work of any kind, the bitter
truth was that Ronicky Doone was no better and no worse than a common
gambler.

Indeed, if to play a game of chance is to commit a sin, Ronicky