"Happy."

There was a hue and cry after him, but he was gone, and a sudden disgust
for the place came over me. For two more days I worked, crushed by a
gloom that momently intensified. Clamant and imperative in me was the
voice of change. I could not become toil-broken, so I saw the foreman.

"Why do you want to go?" he asked reproachfully.

"Well, sir, the work's too monotonous."

"Monotonous! Well, that's the rummest reason I ever heard a man give for
quitting. But every man knows his own business best. I'll give you a
time-cheque."

While he was making it out I wondered if, indeed, I did know my own
business best; but if it had been the greatest folly in the world, I was
bound to get out of that canyon.

Treasuring the slip of paper representing my labour, I sought one of the
bosses, a sour, stiff man of dyspeptic tendencies. With a smile of
malicious sweetness he returned it to me.

"All right, take it to our Oakland office, and you'll get the cash."

Expectantly I had been standing there, thinking to receive my money, the
first I had ever earned (and to me so distressfully earned, at that).
Now I gazed at him very sick at heart: for was not Oakland several
hundred miles away, and I was penniless.

"Couldn't you cash it here?" I faltered at last.

"No!" (very sourly).

"Couldn't you discount it, then?"

"No!" (still more tartly).

I turned away, crestfallen and smarting. When I told the other boys they
were indignant, and a good deal alarmed on their own account. I made my
case against the Company as damning as I could, then, slinging my
blankets on my back, set off once more down the canyon.

CHAPTER VII

I was gaining in experience, and as I hurried down the canyon and the
morning burgeoned like a rose, my spirits mounted invincibly. It was the
joy of the open road and the care-free heart. Like some hideous
nightmare was the memory of the tunnel and the gravel pit. The bright
blood in me rejoiced; my muscles tensed with pride in their toughness; I
gazed insolently at the world.

So, as I made speed to get the sooner to the orange groves, I almost set
heel on a large blue envelope which lay face up on the trail. I examined
it and, finding it contained plans and specifications of the work we had
been at, I put it in my pocket.

Presently came a rider, who reined up by me.

"Say, young man, you haven't seen a blue envelope, have you?"