This was my first sight of Bowie Bushyager. Everybody in Monterey
County, and lots of other people will remember what the name of Bowie
Bushyager once meant; but it meant very little more than that of his
brother, Pitt Bushyager, who got up, grumbling and cursing when Bowie
shook him awake. Bowie was say twenty-eight then, and a fine specimen of
a man in build and size. He was six feet high, had a black beard which
curled about his face, and except for his complexion, which was almost
that of an Indian, his dead-black eye into which you could see no
farther than into a bullet, and for the pitting of his face by smallpox,
he would have been handsome.
"Shut up!" said he to his brother Pitt. "It's time we're gittin' our
grub and pullin' out."
Pitt was even taller than Bowie, and under twenty-five in years. His
face was smooth-shaven except for a short, curly black mustache and a
little goatee under his mouth His eyes were larger than Bowie's and deep
brown, his hair curled down over his rolling collar, and he moved with
an air of ease and grace that were in contrast with the slow power of
Bowie. There was no doubt of it--Pitt Bushyager was handsome in a rough,
daredevil sort of way.
I am describing them, not from the memory of that morning, but because I
knew them well afterward. I knew all the Bushyager boys, and their
father and mother and sisters; and in spite of everything, I rather
liked both Pitt and Claib. Bowie was a forbidding fellow, and Asher, who
was between Bowie and Pitt in age, while he was as big and strong as any
of them, was the gentlest man I ever saw in his manners.
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