“Hush up!” the young mountaineer whispered; “cain’t you see they’re tryin’ for a rise?”

Bob laughed softly to himself, and relaxed.  He should have been experienced enough, he told himself, to have recognized so obvious and usual a trick of all campers.

But it was not for Bob, nor his like, that Ross was angling.  In fact, he caught his bite almost immediately.  For the first time that day Curtis woke up and displayed some interest.

“That’s what I say!” he cried.

The older man turned to him.

“What they been making you do to-day, son?” asked Ross.

“I’ve been digging post holes up in those rocks,” said Curtis indignantly.

“You don’t mean to tell me they put you at that?” demanded Ross; “why, they’re supposed to get Injins, just cheap dollar-a-day Digger Injins, for that job.  And they put you at it!”

“Yes,” said Curtis, “they did.  I didn’t hire out for any such work.  My father’s county clerk down below.”

“You don’t say!” said Ross.

“Yes, and my hands are all blistered and my back is lame, and——­”

But the expectant youngsters could hold in no longer.  A roar of laughter cut the speaker short.  Curtis stared, bewildered.  Ross and Charley Morton were laughing harder than anybody else.  He started to his feet.

“Hold on, son,” Ross commanded him, wiping his eyes.  “Don’t get hostile at a little joke.  You’ll get used to the work.  Of course we all like to ride off in the mountains, and do cattle work, and figure on things, and do administrative work; and we none of us are stuck on construction.”  He looked around him at his audience, now quiet and attentive.  “But we’ve got to have headquarters, and barns, and houses, and corrals and pastures.  Once they’re built, they’re built and that ends it.  But they got to be built.  We’re just in hard luck that we happen to be rangers right now.  The Service can’t hire carpenters for us very well, way up here; and somebody’s got to do it.  It ain’t as if we had to do it for a living, all the time.  There’s a variety.  We get all kinds.  Rangering’s no snap, any more than any other job.  One thing,” he ended with a laugh, “we get a chance to do about everything.”

The valley youth had dropped sullenly back into the shadows, nor did he reply to this.  After a little the men scattered to their quarters, for they were tired.

Bob and Jack Pollock occupied together one of the older cabins, a rough little structure, built mainly of shakes.  It contained two bunks, a rough table, and two stools constructed of tobacco boxes to which legs had been nailed.  As the young men were preparing for bed, Bob remarked: 

“Fletcher got his rise, all right.  Much obliged for your tip.  I nearly bit.  But he wasted his talk in my notion.  That fellow is hopeless.  Ross labours in vain if he tries to brace him up.”

“I reckon Ross knows that,” replied Jack, “and I reckon too, he has mighty few hopes of bracin’ up Curtis.  I have a kind of notion Ross was just usin’ that Curtis as a mark to talk at.  What he was talkin’ to was us.”