In those days he was a young man in his early thirties, engaged in the innocuous business of running a game known as a baby board. It was an arrangement of blackfaced figures on hinges, familiar even to this day at country fairs, which the player endeavored to knock over with baseballs for a prize, as well as a price. The award was a cigar or cigars, according to the player's success, the price a dime, the number of chances three. And that was the beginning of Eddie Kane's consequence in that place.
The diminutive name which his popularity in the days of his small beginning had won for him, stuck to Kane in the state of his new importance, perhaps because his power was without dignity. He was familiarly addressed by it, spoken of by no other, from the Red River to the Kaw.
Kane was a middle-size, lithe man, suffering from a deformity of some unknown origin—it looked as if from strong acid—that had all but put out his eyes and wried his neck until his head almost rested on his left shoulder. But such sight as there was left to his red-lidded, lashless eyes appeared to be sharpened and concentrated. He could see more devious ways to a dollar than the crookedest cattleman that ever beat the Cherokee chiefs on a lease.
He kept his face cleanly shaved, a thin-featured face, cheeks flaccid against his teeth, outstanding, straining tendons in his stocky strong neck. He was a fair-skinned man, although his hair was black as concentrated pigmentation could make it. He wore it cut short, except for a combing forelock which he parted low over his left eyebrow with carefully turned ends, vain adornment in a
