,
and Jake was the name in front of that--for example. He had failed in
his examination for advancement to a commission, and blamed the
aristocracy of the army for it. He was disgusted with military life; and
to him a claim, especially Claim Number One, in the Indian Reservation
of Wyoming, looked like a haven of independence and peace.

There was the bald lawyer, too; a young man old from his honest cares, a
failure in the law because he could not square his conscience with its
practices. He was ready to quit it for an alfalfa-plot and a little
bunch of fat cattle--especially if he drew Number One.

Horace Bentley sighed when he looked back upon his struggles with the
world and the law. The law had been a saddle that galled his back
through many a heavy year. And his brother William, in need of a holiday
from his busy factory, had taken a month to himself to see "the boy," as
he called Horace, established in a new calling in the high-minded,
open-faced West.

As for the insurance solicitor and lumberman, it must be owned that they
were gamblers on the drawing. They meant to register and hang around for
the lottery. Then if they should draw Number One, or even anything up to
a hundred, they would sell out for what there was to be gained.

With Dr. Warren Slavens it was quite different from the case of these
purely adventurous speculators. Dr. Slavens had been late in getting a
start. It was not a difficulty peculiar to him alone that the start
always seemed a considerable distance ahead of him. Up to that time he
had been engaged with merely the preliminaries, and they had hobbled him
and cumbered him, and heaped up continually such a mass of matter to be
smoothed out of the way of his going, that he never had struck a canter
on the highway of life.

Of all the disheartened, blue, and beaten men on that dusty train that
dusty day, Dr. Warren Slavens, late of Missouri, was without question
the deepest down in the quagmire of failure. He hated himself for the
fizzle that he had made of it, and he hated the world that would not
open the gates and give him one straight dash for the goal among men of
his size.

He went frequently to the platform of the car and took a long pull at a
big, black pipe which he carried in a formidable leather case, like a
surgical instrument, in his inner pocket. After each pull at it he
returned with a redder face and a cloudier brow, ready to snap and snarl
like an under dog that believe