h the
office door, which he closed behind him sharply, in reminder that the
interview was at an end.

As Jack went down the steps into the night, the face of John Prather,
with a satirical turn to the lips, was preceding him. Now he walked madly
up and down and back and forth across town to the river fronts, with
panting energy of stride, as he fastened the leash of will on quivering
nerves. When dawn came it was the dawn of the desert calling to a brain
that had fought its way to a lucid purpose. It started him to the store
in the fervor of a grateful mission, while a familiar greeting kept
repeating itself in his ears on the way:

"You won't forget, Jack, about giving me a chance to come along if you
ever go out West again, will you?"

The question was one in answer to a promise; a reminder from certain
employees into whom he had fused his own spirit of enthusiasm about dry
wastes yielding abundance.

"But you must work very hard," he had told them. "Not until you have
callouses on your hands can you succeed or really know how to enjoy a
desert sunrise or sunset. After that, you will be able to stand erect and
look destiny in the face."

"No February slush!" Burleigh, the fitter, had said. "No depending on
one man to hold your job!"

"Your own boss! You own some land and you just naturally get what you
earn!" according to Joe Mathewson.

"And from what I can make out," observed one of the automobile van
drivers whom Jack had accompanied on the suburban rounds, "it requires
about as much brains as running an automobile to be what you'd call a
first-class, a number one desert Rube, Jack!"

"Yes," Jack told him. "The process that makes the earth fruitful is not
less complicated than a motor, simply because it is one of the earliest
inventions. You mix in nature's carbureter light and moisture with the
chemical elements of the soil."

"I'm on!" the chauffeur rejoined. "If a man works with a plow instead of
a screwdriver, it doesn't follow that his mind is as vacant as a cow that
stands stockstill in the middle of the road to show you that you can't
fool her into thinking that radiators are good to eat."

In explaining the labor and pains of orange-growing, which ended only
with the careful picking and packing, Jack would talk as earnestly as his
father would about the tedious detail which went into the purchase and
sale of the articles in any department of the store. He might not be able
to choose the best ex