“Then, there was Fessenden, unearthed a lot of fraud in Oregon and got himself crucified—­got the bounce; had broken his health in that sort of thing; got fired because he proved up that some smug politicians had caused the death of an old couple by jumping their homestead claim and driving them to penury.  Then, there was Carrington.  He was on the Desert Reclamation Project; took his bride in on their honeymoon; hundreds of miles from the railroad.  She was delicate—­lungs; poor fellow thought perhaps camp life would cure her.  She died there in the heat.  Two or three of the men gave up their jobs to help bring the body out.”  Wayland land paused, lost in thought.  “They got the body out all right; but, the horror of it, Carrington went off his head!  Know an engineering chap tramped the Sierras for a hundred miles dogged by a spotter from one of the railroads—­but what’s the use of talking about it?  These things have to be done; and these are the men on the job.”

“The Men on the Job,” slowly repeated Matthews, “the men we make earls and premiers of in Britain; but who of your big public cares one jot?  Time you wakened up as a Nation.”

“You are using almost the same words as Moyese.  He says the public doesn’t care a damn, wouldn’t raise a hand to stand for the rights of one of us, pays us less than dagoes earn.  I guess Moyese doesn’t understand our point of view, can’t take in why we keep at it.”

The wind came through the trees a phantom harper.  The little waves lapped and whispered.  The pine needles clicked pixy castanets; and the moon beams sifted through the trees a silver dust.

“Why do you?  Why do you keep on the job?” asked the old man.

“Hanged if I know,” answered Wayland uncomfortably.

“A saw a man on the job to-day risk his life twice and think no more about it than if he had been out for a walk.  If a man in England, if a man in Germany, if a man in Italy, yes by thunder, Wayland, if a man on the job in pagan Turkey had done what you did to-day, he’d be given a V. C. accordin’ to the Turk, and a title and a pension for life.”

“I don’t despair of a cross myself, when Moyese hears what happened to-day.  It’ll be a double cross with a G. B.; but, speaking of cross, as we have to cross the lake, don’t you think you’d better snatch a little sleep?”

And so the two men, one representing the chivalry of the old West, the other the chivalry of the new, stretched out to sleep with coats for pillows, while the flood-waters went singing through the stones, and the little waves came lipping and whispering, and the low boom of the snow slides rolled through the chambered hollows of canyon and gorge.  Absurd, wasn’t it, but the Ranger was not dreaming about the bevelling trowel of the titan mountain gods?  He went to sleep dreaming of the star visible from the other side of the Holy Cross, dreaming dreams that men and women have dreamed since time began; of drinking,