riend of his friends.

Jakey took neither himself nor his life seriously. He was station agent,
freight agent, express agent, and telegraph operator at Rainbow Station,
R. G. S., and he performed his various duties with laudable promptness,
when nothing more promising attracted his attention. Just now the "more
promising" was in sight. The company had no scruples in dismissing
employees without warning, and Jakey had no quixotic principles which
restrained him for a moment from doing to others what they would do to
him if occasion arose.

Jakey did not hold that the world owed him a living, but he considered
that it possessed a goodly store of desirable things and that these were
held in trust for those who chose to take them. Being "broke" did not
appal him, nor the loss of a job fill him with quaking. The railroad was
not the whole push, and if he could not pump electric juice he could
wield a pick or rope a steer with equal zeal. Just now the most
desirable thing that the world held in trust was the coming fight at the
Rainbow. Accordingly he wired the R. G. S. officials that there was a
vacancy at Rainbow Station. The said officials, being long accustomed to
men of Jakey's stamp, merely remarked, "Damn!" and immediately wired to
the nearest junction point to send another man to take the vacant
position.

Jakey admired Firmstone, and this admiration prepossessed him in
Firmstone's favour. The prepossession was by no means fixed and
invulnerable, and had not Hartwell cleared himself of suspected heresy,
he would have lent the same zeal, now kindling within him, to the Blue
Goose rather than the Rainbow.

In what he recognised as the first round of the opening fight Jakey
realised that the Blue Goose had scored. But, before the special pulled
in, he was ready, and this time he was sure of his move.

"By the Great Spirit of the noble Red Man," Jakey was apostrophising the
distant mountains in ornate language; "what kind of a low-down bird are
you, to be gathered in by a goose, and a blue one at that?" Jakey
paused, gazing earnestly at the retreating figure of the miner. Then,
shaking his fist at the man's back, "Look here, you down-trodden serf of
capitalistic oppression, I'll show you! Don't you fool yourself! Tipped
me the grand ha-ha; did you? Well, you just listen to me! 'Stead of
milking the old cow, you've just rubbed off a few drops from her calf's
nose. That's what, as I'll proceed to demonstrate."

Jakey