t. It
would scare me to be in the same room alone with him."

"I'm sure I shall like them both," said Bauer. "It seems to me that all
the people here at this mission are pretty near the angels."

"Well, some of us are a little lower, I guess. But we do have some jolly
times and no mistake. Barring the heat and the sand and the floods and
the drinking water and the wind and the canned goods and the absence of
pasture and the high price of hay and the lack of shade and a few other
little things, Tolchaco is a great resort all the year around for people
that aren't too particular about trifles.

"But you've pumped me dry about us; mind if I ask a few questions about
you?"

"No," said Bauer with a smile. "There isn't much for me to tell."

"I take it you're a German to start with?" said Clifford gravely, but he
managed in some remarkable manner to work and whistle at the same time
he spoke.

"Yes."

"You won't have much use for the language out here, except Miss Gray
uses it if she wants to. She's reading a book right now in German,
written by a Mr. Goethe. If I had a name like that, I'd have it broken
up and set again in a new frame. Mr. Douglas in his letter about you
said you were an inventor by trade. But he didn't go into particulars.
What can you invent?"

Bauer started to tell Clifford about his incubator. Clifford grew so
interested that he dropped his work and came over on the log by Bauer to
listen. He was just eagerly beginning to ask a number of questions when
he looked up and exclaimed,

"There's that old white face broke his hobbles again and he's heading
for the corn patch. I'll have to head him off."

He started towards the unshackled offender, and Bauer was amused to see
the animal, the moment it caught sight of its keeper kick up its heels
and make a dash for the 'dobe flats into which it madly galloped,
Clifford disappearing in its wake, enveloped in a cloud of dust.

The afternoon sun was pleasantly flecked as it sifted down through the
cottonwoods on Bauer, and he sat there going over his talk with Clifford
and smiling once in awhile in his own fashion as he recalled a sentence
here and there. It was pleasant to be with friends, to feel the strength
coming back, to note the response of his lungs to the full drawn breath.
He had not had a hemorrhage since reaching Tolchaco. And in spite of his
submersion in the river he had suffered almost no pain. He began to
construct some kind of a futur