“Well, we ain’t far from Boomville now, and it’s all down-grade the rest of the way.  I reckon you’ll be as glad to get a ‘wash up’ and a ‘shake’ as the rest of us.”

“I am afraid I won’t have so early an opportunity,” said Demorest, with a faint, grave smile, “for I get off at the cross-road to Heavy Tree Hill.”

“Heavy Tree Hill!” repeated the other in surprise.  “You ain’t goin’ to Heavy Tree Hill?  Why, you might have gone there direct by railroad, and have been there four hours ago.  You know there’s a branch from the Divide Railroad goes there straight to the hotel at Hymettus.”

“Where?” said Demorest, with a puzzled smile.

“Hymettus.  That’s the fancy name they’ve given to the watering-place on the slope.  But I reckon you’re a stranger here?”

“For five years,” said Demorest.  “I fancy I’ve heard of the railroad, although I prefer to go to Heavy Tree this way.  But I never heard of a watering-place there before.”

“Why, it’s the biggest boom of the year.  Folks that are tired of the fogs of ’Frisco and the heat of Sacramento all go there.  It’s four thousand feet up, with a hotel like Saratoga, dancing, and a band plays every night.  And it all sprang out of the Divide Railroad and a crank named George Barker, who bought up some old Ditch property and ran a branch line along its levels, and made a junction with the Divide.  You can come all the way from ’Frisco or Sacramento by rail.  It’s a mighty big thing!”

“Yet,” said Demorest, with some animation, “you call the man who originated this success a crank.  I should say he was a genius.”

The other passenger shook his head.  “All sheer nigger luck.  He bought the Ditch plant afore there was a ghost of a chance for the Divide Railroad, just out o’ pure d——­d foolishness.  He expected so little from it that he hadn’t even got the agreement done in writin’, and hadn’t paid for it, when the Divide Railroad passed the legislature, as it never oughter done!  For, you see, the blamedest cur’ous thing about the whole affair was that this ‘straw’ road of a Divide, all pure wildcat, was only gotten up to frighten the Pacific Railroad sharps into buying it up.  And the road that nobody ever calculated would ever have a rail of it laid was pushed on as soon as folks knew that the Ditch plant had been bought up, for they thought there was a big thing behind it.  Even the hotel was, at first, simply a kind of genteel alms-house that this yer Barker had built for broken-down miners!”

“Nevertheless,” continued Demorest, smiling, “you admit that it is a great success?”

“Yes,” said the other, a little irritated by some complacency in Demorest’s smile, “but the success isn’t HIS’N.  Fools has ideas, and wise men profit by them, for that hotel now has Jim Stacy’s bank behind it, and is even a kind of country branch of the Brook House in ’Frisco.  Barker’s out of it, I reckon.  Anyhow, he couldn’t run a hotel, for all that his wife—­she that’s one of the big ’Frisco swells now—­used to help serve in her father’s.  No, sir, it’s just a fool’s luck, gettin’ the first taste and leavin’ the rest to others.”