seness, their blackened hands and unshaved faces. He was a
gentleman and a Conniston! He was the son of William Conniston, of
Wall Street! He told himself that when they came to know who he was,
who his father was, their incivility would change fast enough into
servility.

And still he had as much as he could do to keep the little hurt, the
sting of his reception, from showing in his face. He glanced as
disgustedly as Hapgood could have done into the rude bunk with its
tangled pile of coarse blankets, and turned away from it. For one
fleeting second the temptation was strong upon him to turn his back
upon the lot of them, to stalk proudly to the door, to go to Mr.
Crawford and tell him that he was not used to this sort of thing and
did not intend to try to grow accustomed to it. One thing only
restrained him. He knew that even as he closed the door behind him he
would hear their voices in rude laughter, and Greek Conniston did not
like being laughed at. Instead he left the bunk and walked quietly to
one of the farther chairs. The air of the bunk-house was already thick
with smoke from the stove and from cigarettes and pipes. Conniston
took out his own pipe, filled it, and, sitting back, added his smoke
to the rest.

The cook had turned to say something to Rawhide Jones, and, carelessly
putting his hand behind him, blistered it against the red-hot top of
the stove, whereupon he burst into such a volley of curses as
Conniston had never heard. The words which streamed from the big man's
mouth actually made Conniston shiver. He turned questioning eyes to
the other men in the room. They were again talking to one another, no
man of them seeming to have so much as heard. Rawhide Jones laughed at
the cook's discomfiture and went back to the door, where he washed his
face and hands at a little basin, plastered his wet hair down as his
companions had already done, and dropped into easy conversation with
the heavy, round-shouldered, yellow-haired man sitting across the room
from Conniston.

"Looks like the Ol' Man means real business, huh, Spud?"

Spud answered with a joyous oath that it certainly looked like it.

"He's puttin' Brayley in on this en' an' takin' ol' Bat Truxton clean
off'n it to throw him onto the Rattlesnake," Spud went on. "Bat 'll
have nigh on a hundred men down there workin' overtime before the
week's up, he says. I guess he'll have his paws full without tryin' to
run the cow en', too."

"An' I reckon,"