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 friendly grin.

"I never saw you but once," reflected Noah Ezekiel, "and that was the Sunday at Mt. Pisgah when my dad lambasted you in his sermon for fiddlin' for the dance Saturday night."

"That sermon," Bob's smile was still a little rueful, "lost me the best job I had ever had."

"Oh, well," consoled the hill billy, "if you hadn't lost it somethin' might have fell on you. That's what I always think when I have to move on." And he repeated with a nonchalant air a nonsensical hill parody:

I eat when I'm hungry,
I drink when I'm dry,
And if a tree don't fall on me
I'll live till I die.

Then his eyes veered round to Bob's fiddle lying to one side on the grass.

"I notice," he grinned, "dad did not convert you."

"No," said Bob, "but he cured me—almost. I've only played the thing twice since."

Rogeen picked up his fiddle and started for his horse.

"Well, so long, Noah. You've got a nice place to work out here." His eyes swept almost covetously over the five-thousand-acre ranch, level as a floor, not a stump or a stone. "If I had this ranch I'd raise six thousand bales of cotton a year, or know the reason why."

"That ain't what the last fellow said," remarked the hill billy, grinningly. "Reedy Jenkins was out yesterday figuring on buyin' the lease; and he said: 'If I had it—I'd raise the rent.'"

CHAPTER II

Bob was out in front of the hardware store dressed in a woollen shirt and overalls, and bareheaded, setting up a cotton planter, when an old gentleman in a linen duster, who had been pacing restlessly up and down the walk like a distant relative waiting for the funeral procession to start, stopped on the sidewalk to watch him work. Whether it was the young man's appearance, his whistling at his work or merely the way he used his hands that attracted the old gentleman was not certain. But after a moment he remarked in a crabbedly friendly tone:

"Young man, you know your business."

"The other fellow's business, you mean," replied Bob without looking up from the bolt he was adjusting. "It is not mine, you know." Bob had been repeating during the last two days the remark of the hill billy—"I'm a willin' cuss, but I ain't got no brains." He had begun to wonder if he was not in the same wagon. He had always thought he had brains, but here he was at twenty-eight no better off than the hill billy. Perhaps not as well, for Noah Ezekiel Foster was getting more per month for riding one tractor than Bob was for selling twenty.

The old gentleman made a noise in his throat that corresponded to a chuckle in a less belligerent man.

"Do you sell farm machinery over there?" The store faced the line; and he nodded toward the Mexican side.

"Yes," answered Bob.

"Know the country pretty well?"

"Yes." The young man rose up with the wrench in his hand, and looked for the first time into the gray-blue eyes under the bushy iron-gray brows. "The country is the same as it is on this side. The people somewhat different."

"Any good chances to invest money over there?" asked the old gentleman.

"I suppose so." Bob stopped to pick up another nut and started to screw it on. "I'm not bothered much hunting for investments. But I reckon there is a chance for a man with money anywhere."

"To spend it," added the other fellow, sharply. "Any place will do for a fool and his money to part. But, young man, it is easier to earn money with brains than it is to keep it without them."

Bob's eyes looking past the old gentleman saw a youngish woman dressed in widow's weeds—very expensive weeds—coming rapidly down the walk from the hotel, and knew she was coming for the old man. As she came nearer, Bob saw she had tawny yellow hair, with slate-coloured eyes and a pious mouth. Her carriage was very erect, very ladylike, and patently she was from the East.

"Oh, Uncle," she gurgled and, as the old gentleman turned, with a little burst of enthusiasm she threw her arms about his neck.

"When did you get in, Evy?" The old gentleman managed to disengage the arms without giving the appearance of heartlessness. His voice was crabbed, but sounded as though it might be from the length of the vocal cords rather than the shortness of disposition.

"Last night." There was an aggrieved touch of self-denying complaint in the tone. "And the little hotel is perfectly wretched. I had such a horrid room—and I felt so conspicuous alone. The landlady told me you had been there looking for me this morning before I was up. I'm so glad to see you, Uncle; just as soon as I heard of poor Aunt Ellen's death I felt that I must come and look after you at any sacrifice." There was a slight pause in which the old gentleman did not venture a remark. "But, Uncle"—there was accusation in the tone—"why did you ever come out to this awful country? The dust was simply awful—I think some of my clothes are ruined."

"The old horse is across the street." The uncle turned and started toward a very high-powered, expensive car.

"Who was that old chap?" Bob asked of Dayton, who came up from breakfast just as the car drove off.

"That's Jim Crill—Texas oil fields. Staying at El Centro and looking for a place to drop his money, I hear. But I wonder who's the lady? I saw her get off the train with Reedy Jenkins yesterday evening."

"A dear relative," remarked Bob with a grin, "come to take care of him since his wife died—and he struck oil."

After a moment—the planter finished—Bob asked casually:

"Does Benson own the Red Butte Ranch?"

"No," answered the implement dealer, "it belongs to the Dan Ryan tract. Dan is one of the very few Americans who has a real title to land on the Mexican side. When Benson leased it two years ago it was merely sand hummocks and mesquite, like the rest of the desert. Spent a lot of money levelling it and getting it ready to water. He lives at Los Angeles, and is one of those fellows who try to farm with money instead of brains and elbow grease. Lost a lot on last year's crop, and now he wants to get rid of his lease."

Bob had been thinking of that ranch most of the time since he fixed the tractor. He loved the soil, and surely a man could get real returns from a field like that.

"I wonder," he remarked without meeting his employer's eyes, "if he would sublease it?"

"Don't know," replied Dayton; "Reedy Jenkins is trying to buy the lease."

"Then," thought Bob as his employer went into the