e and put Ragtime to
the slope. "Watch things!" His voice drifted up from below, clear and
eager, and alive with mirth. "And drive 'em, Joe--drive 'em--drive 'em
from daylight till dark!"

From the threshold Fat Joe watched him until horse and rider disappeared
beyond the line of timber; with broad face aglow he stood, head cocked
upon one side.

Then, "He was figurin'," he muttered in blithe delight, "he was
a-figurin' to himself, all the time I thought he was thinking about her!
I guess my own mind has lately got to dwelling too insistent on trivial
things, for a laboring man. . . . He's taking her back her horse--real
broke up and sorrowful like over the prospect of seein' her again so
soon, too, now wasn't he? And me--me sympathizin' with _him_!
Sometimes, Joe, your lack of penetration is plumb aggravatin' to me. You
talk a lot, but you don't say much! You got to learn to listen."

He stepped forward, remembered and turned back into the cabin. There was
womanish solicitude in the scrutiny he bent upon Garry Devereau's
crookedly smiling face.

"You and me was ordained to be friends," he declared oratorically,
"because anybody that Steve O'Mara calls friend is good enough for me.
And so I'll just naturally have to persuade you to put off indefinitely
this idea of a prolonged excursion, won't I--convince you maybe of the
unnumbered delights of our own earthly suburb, as it were. And fat, eh?
You think I'm fat, do you? Well, that's a matter we'll have to thrash
out when you come to--that and one other which ain't going to be half so
amusin' nor congenial while under consideration. About the best I can
promise you for both of them arguments is that you ain't got a chance to
win either. I got my orders to take care of you."

He tiptoed to the door and went with his oddly light and cat-footed tread
down the hill. Just once more he paused, halfway between the
headquarters of the East Coast Company's chief engineer and the thudding
pile-drivers at the edge of the swamp.

"It won't be so lonesome, having him for company," he told himself.
"It'll be a new mind to delve into,--that is, if he'll only listen a
little to reason, when he wakes up. And I wonder if he takes kindly to a
little friendly game. I wonder, now--I wonder!"

CHAPTER X

NOT A CHANCE IN THE WORLD

Barbara Allison's presence upon the dusty hill-road that morning was
more than the result of a merely casual whim, even though, when