protruded from the far
end of this house, and from it rose a thin spiral of smoke.

"The Ol' Man said I was to show you your bunk," Rawhide Jones muttered
under his breath. "You're to have the one as was Benny's. Benny got
kilt some time back."

He flung the door open and entered. Conniston, at his heels, paused a
moment, staring about him. A man in dingy-blue undershirt, the sleeves
rolled back upon forearms remarkable for their knotting, swelling
muscles, was frying great thick steaks upon the top of the stove,
enveloped in the smoke and odor of his own cooking. In the middle of
the room was a long table, covered with worn oil-cloth, set out with
plates and cups of heavy white ware and with black wooden-handled
knives and forks. Running up and down each side of the one
unpartitioned room were narrow bunks, a row close to the floor,
another row three feet higher, arranged roughly like berths on board a
steamer.

Sitting on chairs, or on the edges of the bunks with their legs
a-dangle, their eyes interestedly upon the cook's operations, were
half a dozen men, rough of garb, rough of hands, big, brawny, uncouth.
As Conniston came into the room every pair of eyes left the cook to
examine him swiftly, frankly. He paused a moment for the introduction
Rawhide Jones would make. But Rawhide Jones had no idea of doing
anything more than enough to fulfil his orders. He strode on through
the men until he stopped at one of the upper bunks, about the middle
of the room, from which a worn, soiled red quilt trailed half-way to
the floor.

"This here was Benny's. It's yourn now."

He had turned away, and, standing with his big hands resting upon his
hips, was watching the cook. And Conniston saw that all of the other
men, seemingly forgetful of his entrance, were again doing the same
thing. He felt suddenly a deep lonesomeness, greater a thousand times
than when he had been actually alone under the spell of the desert.
For here there were men about him who, having seen him, turned away,
shutting him out from them, with no one word of greeting, not so much
as a nod. He was not in the habit of being received this way. It was,
his sensitive nature told him, as though he had been examined by them,
had been recognized as an alien, and had had the doors of their
fraternity clicked in his face.

He felt a sudden bitterness, a sudden anger. And with it he felt a
deep contempt for them, for their petty, unenlightened lives, their
coar