see, it's
a grand property--I'm not above longing for an interest in it myself."

"I can't deny," said Wilmot, who had been worrying himself dreadfully
about finding the means, "that this looks like easy money to me."

The engineer made generous terms across the dinner-table, and the young
Allens borrowed his money from him.

"I suppose," said the engineer hopefully, "that you'll run out from time
to time to see how things are getting on?"

"Run out?" exclaimed Barbara; "we are going to live with the proposition
until it goes through or under. Aren't we, Wilmot?"

"I hoped you'd feel that way about it, Barbs."

"You _knew_ I would."

At first they lived in a tent, and then in a series of large wooden
boxes that they called first "The House" and then "Home." Machinery
began to come into the camp in the wake of long strings of mules walking
two and two. Upon the report of their special consulting engineer the
nearest transcontinental railroad began to lay metals across the desert,
to the mines. One day came strangers with picks and shovels, and the
next day came more. And these began to scratch among the sage-brush and
to explode sticks of dynamite against the faces of hills. Claims were
staked; shanties built; a hotel with saloon attached, all of shining tin
and tar paper, arose in the night. The first thing Barbara knew Wilmot
began to talk of a stretch of sage-brush as Main Street. And the same
day she heard a man with red beard speak of the little town as "Allen."

One night a man was shot dead among the sage-bushes of Main Street. Six
hours later Wilmot came in on a horse covered with lather. There was a
stern, but not unhappy, look in his eyes.

"Well?" she asked.

"He showed fight," said Wilmot; "and we had to pot him."

"Did you--"

"Would you care? We shook hands on keeping all details secret. I think
the town of Allen will be run orderly in the future. And by the way,
have I such a thing as a clean shirt?"

"You will have," said Barbara, "when the things dry."

"Barbara!"

"Yes, it had to come to it. There are only two women in town, and the
other isn't fit to wash your shirts, dear."

"Let me see your hands."

He examined them critically, then kissed them uncritically.

"They don't look like a washer-woman's hands yet," he said.

"No," she said, "not yet. But please say they look less and less like a
sculptor's."

[Illustration: "You will," said Barbara, "when the things dry"]

"Barba