“What’s the matter with you!” cried Bob, exasperated.  “Shut up, and be sensible.”

Welton wiped his eyes.

“That, son, is Carleton P. Baker.  Just say Carleton P. Baker to a Californian.”

“Well, I can’t, for four days, anyway.  Who is he?”

“Didn’t find out from him, for all his talk, did you?” said Welton shrewdly.  “Well, Baker, as he told you, graduated from college in ’93.  He came to California with about two thousand dollars of capital and no experience.  He had the sense to go in for water rights, and here he is!”

“Marvellous!” cried Bob sarcastically.  “But what is he now that he is here?”

“Head of three of the biggest power projects in California,” said Welton impressively, “and controller of more potential water power than any other man or corporation in the state.”

Welton enjoyed his joke hugely.  After Bob had turned in, the big man parted the curtains to his berth.

“Oh, Bob,” he called guardedly.

“What!” grunted the young man, half-asleep.

“Who do you think we’d better get for woods foreman just in case Baker shouldn’t take the job?”

II

All next day the train puffed over the snow-blown plains.  There was little in the prospect, save an inspiration to thankfulness that the cars were warm and comfortable.  Bob and Welton spent the morning going over their plans for the new country.  After lunch, which in the manner of trans-continental travellers they stretched over as long a period as possible, they again repaired to the smoking car.  Baker hailed them jovially, waving a stubby forefinger at vacant seats.

“Say, do Populists grow whiskers, or do whiskers make Populists?” he demanded.

“Give it up,” replied Welton promptly.  “Why?”

“Because if whiskers make Populists, I don’t blame this state for going Pop.  A fellow’d have to grow some kind of natural chest protector in self-defence.  Look at that snow!  And thirty dollars will take you out where there’s none of it, and the soil’s better, and you can see something around you besides fresh air.  Why, any one of these poor pinhead farmers could come out our way, get twenty acres of irrigated land, and in five years—­”

“Hold on!” cried Bob, “you haven’t by any chance some of that real estate for sale—­or a sandbag?”

Baker laughed.

“Everybody gets that way,” said he.  “I’ll bet the first five men you meet will fill you up on statistics.”

He knew the country well, and pointed out in turn the first low rises of the prairie swell, and the distant Rockies like a faint blue and white cloud close down along the horizon.  Bob had never seen any real mountains before, and so was much interested.  The train laboured up the grades, steep to the engine, but insignificant to the eye; it passed through the canons to the broad central plateau.  The country was broken and strange, with its wide, free sweeps, its sage brush, its stunted trees, but it was not mountainous as Bob had conceived mountains.  Baker grinned at him.