oulder between you and Nigger before you do."

"I don't like the look av the baste's eye," declined the Irishman. "I
wudn't doubt ye're worrud for the wurrold. But he wudn't jump a mon divvil
a bit quicker than his master, or I'm a sinner!"

Trevison's eyes twinkled. "You're a good construction boss, Carson. But
I'm glad to see that you're getting more considerate."

"Av what?"

"Of your men." Trevison glanced back; he had looked once before, out of
the tail of his eye. The laborers were idling in the cut, enjoying the
brief rest, taking advantage of Carson's momentary dereliction, for the
last car had been filled.

"I'll be rayported yet, begob!"

Carson waved his hands, and the laborers dove for the flat-cars. When the
last man was aboard, the engine coughed and moved slowly away. Carson
climbed into the engine-cab, with a shout: "So-long bhoy!" to Trevison.
The latter held Nigger with a firm rein, for the animal was dancing at the
noise made by the engine, and as the cars filed past him, running faster
now, the laborers grinned at him and respectfully raised their hats. For
they had come from one of the Latin countries of Europe, and for them, in
the person of this heroic figure of a man who had ridden his horse down
the steep wall of the cut, was romance.

CHAPTER II

IN WHICH HATRED IS BORN

For some persons romance dwells in the new and the unusual, and for other
persons it dwells not at all. Certain of Rosalind Benham's friends would
have been able to see nothing but the crudities and squalor of Manti,
viewing it as Miss Benham did, from one of the windows of her father's
private car, which early that morning had been shunted upon a switch at
the outskirts of town. Those friends would have seen nothing but a new
town of weird and picturesque buildings, with more saloons than seemed to
be needed in view of the noticeable lack of citizens. They would have
shuddered at the dust-windrowed street, the litter of refuse, the dismal
lonesomeness, the forlornness, the utter isolation, the desolation. Those
friends would have failed to note the vast, silent reaches of green-brown
plain that stretched and yawned into aching distances; the wonderfully
blue and cloudless sky that covered it; they would have overlooked the
timber groves that spread here and there over the face of the land, with
their lure of mystery. No thoughts of the bigness of this country would
have crept in upon them--except as they migh