e wilderness. As influences--city
or wilderness--it was all the same to them. They made their own
influences--which in turn developed a special type of people--among the
delicate and powerful mysteries of their craft. Down through the land
they had laid the narrow, uniform strip of their peculiar activities;
and on that strip they dwelt satisfied with a world of their own. Bob
sat in a swinging chair talking in snatches to Hicks, between calls on
the telephone. He listened to quick, sharp orders as to men and
instruments, as to the management of water, the undertaking of repairs.
These were couched in technical phrases and slang, for the most part. By
means of the telephone Hicks seemed to keep in touch not only with the
plants in his own district, but also with the activities in Power Houses
Two, Three and Four, many miles away. Hicks had never once, in four
years, been to the top of the first range. He had had no interest in
doing so. Neither had he an interest in the foothill country to the
west.

"I'd kind of like to get back and kill a buck or so," he confessed; "but
I haven't got the time."

"It's a different country up where we are," urged Bob. "You wouldn't
know it for the same state as this dry and brushy country. It has fine
timber and green grass."

"I suppose so," said Hicks indifferently. "But I haven't got the time."

Bob rode away a trifle inclined to that peculiar form of smug pity a
hotel visitor who has been in a place a week feels for yesterday's
arrival. He knew the coolness of the great mountain.

At this point an opening in the second growth of yellow pines permitted
him a vista. He looked back. He had never been in this part of the
country before. A little portion of Baldy, framed in a pine-clad cleft
through the First Range, towered chill, rugged and marvellous in its
granite and snow. For the first time Bob realized that even so
immediately behind the scene of his summer's work were other higher,
more wonderful countries. As he watched, the peak was lost in the
blackness of one of those sudden storms that gather out of nothing about
the great crests. The cloud spread like magic in all directions. The
faint roll of thunder came down a wind, damp and cool, sucked from the
high country.

Bob rounded a bend in the road to overtake old California John, jingling
placidly along on his beautiful sorrel. Though by no means friendly to
any member of this branch of government service, Bob reined his