shoulder:

"I'm the chauffeur of that blamed tractor--I told Old Benson I didn't
know any more about it than he does of the New Jerusalem; but he put me
at it anyhow.

"I'm a willin' cuss. But the main trouble with me is I ain't got no
brains. If I had, I wouldn't be on this job, and if I was, I could fix
the darn thing myself.

"My dad," continued the guide, "was purty strong on brains, but I
didn't take after him much. If I was as posted on tractors as the old
man was on hell fire, I wouldn't need you."

Something in this hill billy's tone stirred in Bob a sudden
recollection.

"Was he a preacher?"

"Yep, named Foster, and I'm his wandering boy to-night."

Bob lifted his head and laughed. It was a queer world. He inquired
about the trouble with the tractor.

"I sure hope you can fix it," said Noah Ezekiel. "Old Benson will
swear bloody-murder if we don't get the cotton in before the tenth of
April. He wants to unload the lease."

The sun was scarcely an hour high when the steady, energetic chuck,
chuck of the tractor engine told Bob his work was done. He shut it
off, and turned to Noah Ezekiel.

"There you are--as good as new. And it is worth ten men and forty
mules. Not much like we used to farm back in the Ozarks, is it?"

"We?" Noah Ezekiel rubbed his lean jaw and looked questioningly at the
fixer. "I'm from the Ozarks, but as the silk hat said to the ash can,
'Where in hell does the _we_ come in?'"

"You don't happen to remember me?" There was a humorous quirk at the
corner of Rogeen's mouth as he stood wiping the oil and grease from his
hands with a bunch of dry grass.

The shambling hill billy took off his floppy-brimmed straw hat and
scratched his head as he studied Bob with the careless but always alert
blue eyes of the mountain-turkey hunter--eyes that never miss the turn
of a leaf nor forget a trail.

Those eyes began at the feet, took in the straight waistline, the
well-knit shoulders. Bob weighed a hundred and eighty and looked as
though he were put together to stay. For a moment Noah Ezekiel studied
the friendly mouth, the resolute nose, the frank brown eyes; but not
until they concentrated on the tangled mop of dark hair did a light
dawn on the hill billy's face.

"Well, I'll be durned!" The exclamation was deep and soul-satisfying,
and he held out his hand. "If you ain't Fiddlin' Bob Rogeen, I'll eat
my hat!"

"Save your hat." Bob met the recognition with a frien