face perspiring and red, always greeted him
jovially.

"Spend all your salary this month?" he would ask. "Does the business
keep you occupied?" And once or twice, seriously, "Bob, haven't you had
enough of this confounded nonsense? You're getting too old to find any
great fun riding around in this kid fashion pretending to do things.
There's big business to be done in this country, and we need you boys to
help. When I was a youngster I'd have jumped hard at half the chance
that's offered you."

But Bob never would answer seriously. He knew this to be his only chance
of avoiding even a deeper misunderstanding between himself and this man
whom he had learned to admire and love.

Once he met Baker. That young man greeted him as gaily as ever, but into
his manner had crept the shadow of a cold contempt. The stout youth's
standards were his own, and rigid, as is often the case with people of
his type. Bob felt himself suddenly and ruthlessly excluded from the
ranks of those worthy of Baker's respect. A hard quality of character,
hitherto unsuspected, stared from the fat young man's impudent blue
eyes. Baker was perfectly polite, and suitably jocular; but he had not
much time for Bob; and soon plunged into a deep discussion with Welton
from which Bob was unmistakably excluded.

On one occasion, too, he encountered Oldham riding down the trail from
headquarters. The older man had nodded to him curtly. His eyes had
gleamed through his glasses with an ill-concealed and frosty amusement,
and his thin lips had straightened to a perceptible sneer. All at once
Bob divined an enemy. He could not account for this, as he had never
dealt with the man; and the accident of his discovering the gasoline
pump on the Lucky Land Company's creeks could hardly be supposed to
account for quite so malignant a triumph. Next time Bob saw Welton, he
asked his old employer about it.

"What have I ever done to Oldham?" he inquired. "Do you know?"

"Oldham?" repeated Welton.

"Baker's land agent."

"Oh, yes. I never happened to run across him. Don't know him at all."

Bob put down Oldham's manifest hatred to pettiness of disposition.

Even from Merker, the philosophic storekeeper, Bob obtained scant
comfort.

"Men like you, with ability, youth, energy," said Merker, "producing
nothing, just conserving, saving. Conditions should be such that the
possibility of fire, of trespass, of all you fellows guard against,
should be eliminated. Then y