lton sighed.

"I can't go down and tend to this," said he. "My foremen are here to be
consulted, and the crews will begin to come in to-morrow. You'll have to
go and see what's eating this tender Plant, Bob. Saddle up and ride down
with Mr. Leejune."

Bob took his first lesson in Western riding behind Lejeune and his
stolid mule. He had ridden casually in the East, as had most young men
of his way of life, but only enough to make a fair showing on a gentle
and easy horse. His present mount was gentle and easy enough, but Bob
was called upon to admire feats of which a Harlem goat might have been
proud. Lejeune soon turned off the wagon road to make his way directly
down the side of the mountain. Bob possessed his full share of personal
courage, but in this unaccustomed skirting of precipices, hopping down
ledges, and sliding down inclines too steep to afford a foothold he
found himself leaning inward, sitting very light in the saddle, or
holding his breath until a passage perilous was safely passed. In the
next few years he had occasion to drop down the mountainside a great
many times. After the first few trips he became so thoroughly accustomed
that he often wondered how he had ever thought this scary riding. Now,
however, he was so busily occupied that he was caught by surprise when
Lejeune's mule turned off through a patch of breast-high manzanita and
he found himself traversing the gentler slope at the foot of the
mountain. Ten minutes later they entered Sycamore Flats.

Then Bob had leisure to notice an astonishing change of temperature. At
the mill the air had been almost cold--entirely so out of the direct
rays of the sun. Here it was as hot as though from a furnace. Passing
the store, Bob saw that the tall thermometer there stood at 96 degrees.
The day was unseasonable, but later, in the August heats, Bob had often,
to his sorrow, to test the difference between six thousand and two
thousand feet of elevation. From a clear, crisp late-spring climate he
would descend in two hours to a temperature of 105 degrees.

Henry Plant was discovered sprawled out in an armchair beneath a
spreading tree in the front yard. His coat was off and his vest
unbuttoned to display a vast and billowing expanse of soiled white
shirt. In his hand was a palm-leaf fan, at his elbow swung an _olla_,
newspapers littered the ground or lay across his fat knees. When Bob and
Lejeune entered, he merely nodded surlily, and went on with his rea