o ought to have been a clergyman, nothing was left but a
long engineering course for which, after he got it, he appeared to
have no use. However, it seemed a little late to shift the life
alignments. John had the pulpit and appeared disposed to keep it, and
George was left, like a New England farm, to wonder what had become of
himself.

It is, nevertheless, odd how matters come about. John McCloud, a
prosperous young clergyman, stopped on a California trip at Medicine
Bend to see brother George's classmate and something of a real Western
town. He saw nothing sensational--it was there, but he did not see
it--but he found both hospitality and gentlemen, and, if surprised,
was too well-bred to admit it. His one-day stop ran on to several
days. He was a guest at the Medicine Bend Club, where he found men who
had not forgotten the Harvard Greek plays. He rode in private cars and
ate antelope steak grilled by Glover's own darky boy, who had roasted
buffalo hump for the Grand Duke Alexis as far back as 1871, and still
hashed his browned potatoes in ragtime; and with the sun breaking
clear over the frosty table-lands, a ravenous appetite, and a day's
shooting in prospect, the rhythm had a particularly cheerful sound.
John was asked to occupy a Medicine Bend pulpit, and before Sunday the
fame of his laugh and his marksmanship had spread so far that Henry
Markover, the Yale cowboy, rode in thirty-two miles to hear him
preach. In leaving, John McCloud, in a seventh heaven of enthusiasm
over the high country, asked Morris Blood why he could not find
something for George out there; and Blood, not even knowing the boy
wanted to come, wrote for him, and asked Bucks to give him a job.
Possibly, being over-solicitous, George was nervous when he talked to
Bucks; possibly the impression left by his big, strong, bluff brother
John made against the boy; at all events, Bucks, after he talked with
George, shook his head. "I could make a first-class railroad man out
of the preacher, Morris, but not out of the brother. Yes, I've talked
with him. He can't do anything but figure elevations, and, by heaven,
we can't feed our own engineers here now." So George found himself
stranded in the mountains.

Morris Blood was cut up over it, but George McCloud took it quietly.
"I'm no worse off here than I was back there, Morris." Blood, at that,
plucked up courage to ask George to take a job in the Cold Springs
mines, and George jumped at it. It was imp