"Just to show people he can, you know."

Roger shook his head and applied himself to his glass, failing to see
the humor of the thing. And while the bigger man continued to muse
with twinkling eyes over the idiosyncrasies of an enormously wealthy
but at the same time enormously hard-headed father, with old-fashioned
ideas of the dignity of labor, Roger sat frowning into his glass.

The silence, into which the click of the rails below had entered so
persistently as to become a part of it rather than to disturb it, was
broken at last by the clamorous screaming of the engine. The train was
slackening its speed. Greek flipped up the shade and looked out.

"Another one of those toy villages," he called over his shoulder. "Who
in the devil would want to get off here?"

Roger sank a trifle deeper into his chair, indicating no interest. The
fat man had dropped his newspaper to the floor and was leaning out the
window.

"Great country, ain't it?" he called to Greek.

"Yes, it certainly _ain't_! What gets me is, why do people live in a
place like this? Are they all crazy?"

The train now was jerking and bumping to a standstill. Sixty yards
away was a little, bluish-gray frame building, by far the most
pretentious of the clutter of shacks, flaunting the legend, "Prairie
City." Beyond the station was the to-be-expected general store and
post-office. A bit farther on a saloon. Beyond that another, and then