frosty eyes, and a very white face. In fact he looked as if he might
have recently been sick, though his huge, muscular frame showed no
effects of an illness. He had a jagged, bluish scar over one eye,
which traveled up his forehead and disappeared beneath his hair,
plainly the result of some terrible clout. But it was not these
things, not his face or size which drew me to him; it was his bearing.

All of the chaps in Swede Olson's house were hard cases. They boasted
of their hardness. But their hardness was the typical tough's
hardness, nine parts bravado, a savagery not difficult to subdue with
an oak belaying pin in the fist of a bucko mate. But the hardness of
this big, scar-faced man was of a different sort. You sensed,
immediately you looked at him, that he possessed a steely armor of
indifference that penetrated to his very heart. He was a real hard
case, a proper nut, a fellow who simply did not care what happened. It
was nothing he said or did, but his demeanor declared plainly he was
utterly reckless of events or consequences. It was amusing to observe
how circumspectly the bullies of the house walked while in his
neighborhood.

But I found him to be a man of silent and lonesome habit, and
temperate. He discouraged my friendly advance with a cold
indifference, and my idea of chumming with him during my pay-day "bust"
soon went glimmering. Yet I admired him mightily from the moment I
first clapped eyes upon him, and endeavored to imitate his carriage of
utter recklessness in my own strutting.