“This here was Benny’s.  It’s yourn now.”

He had turned away, and, standing with his big hands resting upon his hips, was watching the cook.  And Conniston saw that all of the other men, seemingly forgetful of his entrance, were again doing the same thing.  He felt suddenly a deep lonesomeness, greater a thousand times than when he had been actually alone under the spell of the desert.  For here there were men about him who, having seen him, turned away, shutting him out from them, with no one word of greeting, not so much as a nod.  He was not in the habit of being received this way.  It was, his sensitive nature told him, as though he had been examined by them, had been recognized as an alien, and had had the doors of their fraternity clicked in his face.

He felt a sudden bitterness, a sudden anger.  And with it he felt a deep contempt for them, for their petty, unenlightened lives, their coarseness, their blackened hands and unshaved faces.  He was a gentleman and a Conniston!  He was the son of William Conniston, of Wall Street!  He told himself that when they came to know who he was, who his father was, their incivility would change fast enough into servility.

And still he had as much as he could do to keep the little hurt, the sting of his reception, from showing in his face.  He glanced as disgustedly as Hapgood could have done into the rude bunk with its tangled pile of coarse blankets, and turned away from it.  For one fleeting second the temptation was strong upon him to turn his back upon the lot of them, to stalk proudly to the door, to go to Mr. Crawford and tell him that he was not used to this sort of thing and did not intend to try to grow accustomed to it.  One thing only restrained him.  He knew that even as he closed the door behind him he would hear their voices in rude laughter, and Greek Conniston did not like being laughed at.  Instead he left the bunk and walked quietly to one of the farther chairs.  The air of the bunk-house was already thick with smoke from the stove and from cigarettes and pipes.  Conniston took out his own pipe, filled it, and, sitting back, added his smoke to the rest.

The cook had turned to say something to Rawhide Jones, and, carelessly putting his hand behind him, blistered it against the red-hot top of the stove, whereupon he burst into such a volley of curses as Conniston had never heard.  The words which streamed from the big man’s mouth actually made Conniston shiver.  He turned questioning eyes to the other men in the room.  They were again talking to one another, no man of them seeming to have so much as heard.  Rawhide Jones laughed at the cook’s discomfiture and went back to the door, where he washed his face and hands at a little basin, plastered his wet hair down as his companions had already done, and dropped into easy conversation with the heavy, round-shouldered, yellow-haired man sitting across the room from Conniston.

“Looks like the Ol’ Man means real business, huh, Spud?”