"Your father is what he is aside from his profession."

"You are quite mistaken, Paul. My father and his profession are one. His
sword is a symbol of healing. The army is the great surgeon of the nation
when the time comes for a capital operation."

"It grows harder to tell my story," said Paul gloomily;--"the short and
simple annals of the poor."

"Now come! Have I been a snob about my father's profession?"

"No; but you love it, naturally. You have grown up with its pomp and
circumstance around you. You are the history makers when history is most
exciting."

"Go on with your story, you proud little Dutchman! When I despise you for
your farming relatives, you can taunt me with my history making."

Paul was about two years old when his parents broke up in the Wood River
country and came south by wagon on the old stage-road to Felton. Whenever
he saw a "string-bean freighter's" outfit moving into Bisuka, if there was
a woman on the driver's seat, he wanted to take off his hat to her. For so
his mother sat beside his father and held him in her arms two hundred
miles across the Snake River desert. The stages have been laid off since
the Oregon Short Line went through, but there were stations then all along
the road.

One night they made camp at a lonely place between Soul's Rest and
Mountain Home. Oneman Station it was called; afterwards Deadman Station,
when the keeper's body was found one morning stiff and cold in his bunk.