Ross laughed to himself.  “About the most complicated thing you’ll have to learn,” he said, “is how to put in your time.  It’s hard to get a man that will stay at lookout stations.  Lonesome—­that’s all.  It’s about as bad as being a sheepherder, only you won’t have any sheep for company.  Up on Mount Hough you’ll have to live in a little glass house about the size of this room, and do your cooking on an oil stove.  Your work will be watching your district for fires, and reporting them here—­by phone.  There’s a man up there now, but he doesn’t want to stay.  He’s been hollering for some one to take his place.  You’re entitled to four days relief a month—­when we send up a man to take your place.  Aside from that you’ll have to stay right up on that peak, and watch for fires.  The fellow up there will show you how to use the chart and locate fires so you can tell us exactly where it is that you see smoke.  You can’t leave except when you’re given permission and some one comes to take your place.  We send up your supplies and mail once a week on a pack horse.  Your pay will be seventy dollars a month.

“I don’t want you to take it unless you feel pretty sure you can stick.  I’m tired of sending men up there for a week or two and having them phoning in here a dozen times a day about how lonesome it is, then quitting cold.  We can’t undertake to furnish you with amusement, and we are too busy to spend the day gossiping with you over the phone just to help you pass the time.”  He snapped his mouth together as though he meant every word of it and a great deal more.  “Do you want the job?” he asked grimly.

Jack heard a chuckle from the next room, and his own lips came together with a snap.

“Lead me to it,” he said cheerfully.  “I’d stand on my head and point the wind with my legs for seventy dollars a month!  Sounds to me like a good place to save money—­what?”

“Don’t know how you’d go about spending much as long as you stayed up there,” Ross retorted drily.  “It’s when a man comes down that his wages begin to melt.”

Jack considered this point, standing with his feet planted a little apart and his hands in his pockets, which is the accepted pose of the care-free scion of wealth who is about to distinguish himself.  He believed that he knew best how to ward off suspicion of his motives in thus exiling himself to a mountain top.  He therefore grinned amiably at Ross.

“Well, then, I won’t come down,” he stated calmly.  “What I’m looking for is a chance to make some money without any chance of spending it.  Lead me to this said mountain with the seventy-dollar job holding down the peak.”

Ross looked at him dubiously as though he detected a false note somewhere.  Good looking young fellows with the tangible air of the towns and easy living did not, as a rule, take kindly to living alone on some mountain peak.  He stared up into Jack’s face unwinkingly, seeking there the real purpose behind such easy acceptance.