age them so they earn a dollar and a half a day and give them a
dollar and thirty cents of it and keep twenty cents, you are a public
benefactor as well as a smart man. That is the way to do it; use your
brains to increase other men's production and take a fair per cent. of
it, and you'll be both rich and honest."

Bob's brown eyes were eagerly attentive. He liked this cryptic old
man. This was real stuff he was talking; and it was getting at the
bottom of Rogeen's own problem. All these years he had tried to
produce value single-handed. But to win big, he must think, plan,
organize so as to make money for many people, and therefore entitle
himself to large returns.

"I'm going to try that very thing," he said. "I've just leased one
hundred and sixty acres. Half already planted in cotton, and I'm going
to plant the rest."

Bob was proud of his achievement. He had been really glad he failed to
get the Red Butte Ranch. It was entirely too big to tackle without
capital or experience. But he had found a rancher anxious to turn
loose his lease for about half what he had spent improving it. Rogeen
then convinced a cotton-gin man that he was a good risk; and offered to
give him ten per cent. interest, half the cotton seed, and to gin the
crop at his mill if he would advance money sufficient to buy the lease
and raise the crop. The gin man had agreed to do it.

Crill jerked his head approvingly. "Good move. That's the way to go
at it. Think first, then work like the devil at the close of a
revival."

Crill paused, and then asked abruptly:

"Know a man named Jenkins?"

"Yes," replied Bob.

"Is he safe?"

Bob grinned. "About as safe as a rattlesnake in dog days."

As Jim Crill stalked up the outside stairway of Reedy Jenkins' office,
the wind whipping the tail of the linen duster about his legs, he
carried with him two very conflicting opinions of Reedy--Mrs. Barnett's
and Bob Rogeen's. Maybe one of them was prejudiced--possibly both.
Well, he would see for himself.

Reedy jumped up, gave his head a cordial fling, and grabbed Jim Crill's
hand as warmly as though he were chairman of the committee welcoming
the candidate for vice-president to a tank-station stop. Reedy
remembered very distinctly meeting Mr. Crill in Chicago five years ago.
In fact, Mr. Crill had for a long time been Mr. Jenkins' ideal of the
real American business man--shrewd, quick to think, and fearless in
action; willing to take