"Oh, well," said Kemp, "since the applicants are more numerous than the
posts, I reckon another won't count. Do you expect they're going to take
you on?"

"I expect my chance is as good as yours."

"I'll sell you my chance for ten dollars," Kemp rejoined.

"Nothing doing, at the price," said Willis, and went off.

Kemp laughed. Willis was marked by a superficial smartness his comrades
sometimes found amusing and sometimes annoying. For the most part, they
bore with him good-humoredly, but did not trust him when work that
needed careful thought was done.

"The kid looks confident, but his applying for a job is something of a
joke," Kemp remarked. "I'd put his value at fifty cents a day."

Lister agreed, and looked up the dusty street. The fronts of the small
frame houses were cracked by the sun, and some were carried up to hide
the roof and give the building a fictitious height. A Clover-leaf wagon
stood in front of a store, the wheels crusted by dry mud, and the team
fidgeted amidst a swarm of flies. Except for one or two railroad hands
waiting by the caboose of a freight train, nobody was about. The town
looked strangely dreary.

Yet Lister knew it stood for all the relief from labor in the stinging
alkali dust one could get. One could loaf in a hard chair in front of
the hotel, lose a dollar or two at the shabby pool-room, or go to a
movie show and see pictures of frankly ridiculous Western melodrama. In