he declared that he could dynamite his way out inside of
four hours.

The effect of all this on Rainey was a bit bewildering. He was judging
life by new standards far apart from his own modes and, though he, too,
worked with a will, and rejoiced in the freer effort of his muscles, the
result comparing favorably with the best of the others--save Lund--he
could not assimilate the general conditions.

They were too purely physical, he told himself; he missed his old
habits, the reading and discussion of books, new and old, the good
restaurants of San Francisco, and the chat he had been used to hold over
their tables, companionable, witty, the exchange and stimulation of
ideas.

He missed the theaters, the concerts, the passing show of well-dressed
women, a hodge-podge of flesh-pots and mental uplift. He got to dreaming
of these things nights.

Daytimes, he saw plainly that, in this environment at least, Lund was
big, and the rest of them comparatively small. He believed that Lund
could actually form a little kingdom of his own, as he had suggested,
and make a success of it. But it would not be a kingdom that fostered
the arts. It would cultivate the sciences, or at least encourage them
and adopt results as applied to land development, and, if necessary, the
defense of the kingdom.

Lund would be a figure in war and peace, peace of the practical sort,
the kind of peace that went with plenty. He was no dreamer, but a
utilitarian. Perhaps, after all, the world most needed such men just
now.

As for Peggy Simms, she did not lose the polish of her culture, she was
always feminine, even dainty at times, despite her work, that could not
help but be coarse to a certain extent. She was full of vigor, she
showed unexpected strength, she was a source of encouragement to the men
as she waited on them. And also a source of undisguised admiration, all
of which she shed as a duck sheds water. She was filled with abounding
health, she moved with a free grace that held the eye and lingered in
the mind. She was eminently a woman, and she also was big.

Rainey gained an increasing respect in her prowess, and a swift
conversion to the equality of the sexes. There were times when he
doubted his own equality. Had she met him on his own ground, in his own
realm of what he considered vaguely as culture, he would have known a
mastery that he now lacked. As it was, she averaged higher, and she had
an attraction of sex that was compelling.