ight be gone, but they told us that you had not yet
come down."

"If I'd known you were coming I'd have been at the curb before
daybreak," grinned Johnny. "You're in some rush this morning."

"There must be some rushing if you have that million dollars by four
o'clock," laughed Constance. "Polly and I want you to have it."

"You're right that I'll have to go some," he admitted.

"Excuse the chauffeur for interrupting your conversation," protested
Polly, turning round and deftly missing a venturesome banana cart; "but
you grabbed off half a million of it on a holiday."

"It was twelve-thirty this morning when we took Gresham," claimed
Johnny. "This is a working-day."

"Hotel Midas," announced the chauffeur, pulling up to that flamboyant
new hostelry with a flourish.

Johnny hurried in to the desk, where Mr. Boise had already left word
that Mr. Gamble should be shown right up. He found that fatigue-proof
old Westerner shining from his morning ablutions, as neat as a pin from
head to foot, and smoking his after-breakfast cigar in a parlor which
had not so much as a tidy displaced. His eyes twinkled the moment he
saw Johnny.

"I suppose you still have a disinterested anxiety to have me adopt the
Sage City and Salt Pool route?" he laughed.

"I'm still anxious about it," amended Johnny, refusing to smile at his
own evasion of the disinterestedness. "I brought you a wad of reports
and things to show you how good that territory is. You don't know what
a rich pay-streak you'd open up in that part of the Sancho Hills Basin."

Mr. Boise laughed with keen enjoyment.

"I don't think I need to wade through that stuff, Johnny," he admitted,
having picked up from Courtney the habit of calling young Gamble by his
first name. "To tell you the truth, I sent a wireless telegram to my
chief engineer yesterday afternoon, off Courtney's yacht when we
connected with the Taft, and this morning I have a five-hundred-word
night lettergram from him, telling me that after a thorough
investigation of the situation he finds that the Sage City and the
Lariat Center routes are so evenly balanced in advantage that a choice
of them is really only a matter of sentiment."

Johnny paused awkwardly, stumped for the first time in his life.

"I don't know how to make that kind of an argument," he confessed, to
the great enjoyment of Boise.

"It is rather difficult," admitted that solidly constructed railroad
president; "particularly since I pe