eligible localities; and
their subordinates kept the work in hand during their frequent
home-goings. But the ruck--the rank and file--had to take such marital
happiness as came their way on the quick-lunch system.

Now Farwell was a bachelor, rooted and confirmed. He had always shunned
married men's quarters. When his day's work was done, he foregathered
with other lone males, talking shop half the night in a blue haze of
tobacco around a red-hot stove or stretched in comfortable undress in
front of a tent. This was his life as he had lived it for years; as he
had hoped to live it until he attained fame and became a consulting
engineer, a man who passed on the work of other men.

His theory of his own capacity for domesticity, though sincere, was
strictly academic. He had no more idea of putting it into practice than
he had of proving in his own person, before his proper time, the
doctrine of eternal life.

Now, into the familiar sum of existence, which he knew from divisor to
quotient, was suddenly shot a new factor--a woman. He experienced a new
sensation, vague, unaccountable, restless, like the first uneasy throbs
that precede a toothache. He lit a cigar; but, though he drew in the
smoke hungrily, it did not satisfy. He felt a vacancy, a want, a
longing.

He became aware of a dust cloud approaching. Ahead of it loped a big,
clean-limbed buckskin. In the straight, wiry figure in the saddle he
recognized Casey Dunne. Dunne pulled up and nodded.

"Fine day, Mr. Farwell."

"Yes," said Farwell briefly.

"Work coming on all right?"

"Yes."

"That's good," Dunne commented, with every appearance of lively
satisfaction. "Been to Talapus? See anything of Miss McCrae there?"

"She's at home, I believe," said Farwell stiffly.

"Thanks. Come around and see me some time. Morning." He lifted the
buckskin into a lope again.

Farwell looking after him, experienced a second new
sensation--jealousy.

CHAPTER X

Casey Dunne, busily engaged in strengthening a working harness with
rivets, looked up as a shadow fell across the morning sunlight. The
shadow belonged to Tom McHale.

McHale, like Dunne himself, had seen rough times. Older than his
employer, he had wandered up and down the West in the good old days of
cheap land and no barbed wire, engaged in the congenial, youthful
occupation of seeing as much country as he could. In the process, he
had turned his hand to almost everything which had fresh air as