e played for the
feeling it gave him of being one of the bunch, a man among his friends;
or if not friends, at least acquaintances. And, such was his varying
luck with the cards, he played for an hour or so without having won
enough to irritate his companions. Wherefore he rose from the table at
supper time calling one young fellow Frank quite naturally. They went to
the Alpine House and had supper together, and after that they sat in
the office and talked about automobiles for an hour, which gave Bud a
comforting sense of having fallen among friends.

Later they strolled over to a picture show which ran films two years
behind their first release, and charged fifteen cents for the privilege
of watching them. It was the first theater Bud had entered since he left
San Jose, and at the last minute he hesitated, tempted to turn back.
He hated moving pictures. They always had love scenes somewhere in the
story, and love scenes hurt. But Frank had already bought two tickets,
and it seemed unfriendly to turn back now. He went inside to the
jangling of a player-piano in dire need of a tuner's service, and sat
down near the back of the hall with his hat upon his lifted knees which
could have used more space between the seats.

While they waited for the program they talked in low tones, a mumble of
commonplaces. Bud forgot for the moment his distaste for such places,
and let himself slip easily back into the old thought channels, the
old habits of relaxation after a day's work was done. He laughed at
the one-reel comedy that had for its climax a chase of housemaids,
policemen, and outraged fruit vendors after a well-meaning but
unfortunate lover. He saw the lover pulled ignominiously out of a duck
pond and soused relentlessly into a watering trough, and laughed with
Frank and called it some picture.

He eyed a succession of "current events" long since gone stale out
where the world moved swifter than here in the mountains, and he felt
as though he had come once more into close touch with life. All the dull
months he had spent with Cash and the burros dwarfed into a pointless,
irrelevant incident of his life. He felt that he ought to be out in the
world, doing bigger things than hunting gold that somehow always
refused at the last minute to be found. He stirred restlessly. He was
free--there was nothing to hold him if he wanted to go. The war--he
believed he would go over and take a hand. He could drive an ambulance
or a truck-