“There’s so little to explain,” said Demarest as the happy party trooped to the wide veranda at Squawtooth. “If I’d dreamed—why didn’t I think of it! You see, this young sprout is going to be our general manager. He’d just finished his engineering course, and before he took hold of the work he got it into his head that he had no business managing big camps till he knew the inside lives of the men that would be workin’ under him.
“‘Well, son,’ I says, ‘there’s only one way to know that, and that’s to hop to it. Take a month—two months—six months, if you like—and live the life with ’em from A to Z. ’Tain’t a bad idea, either,’ I says. You see, folks, I come up from the grade myself. I wasn’t exactly what we call a stiff, but I’d done everything from skinnin’ mules and bein’ powder monkey to paymaster before I had an outfit of my own. So I thought it would do the boy a world o’ good to get a little democracy into him after college, and before he took hold. And, by golly, if he didn’t hit the trail like a regular stiff—went broke a-purpose, and all that, and ended up flunkyin’ in a camp out West. ’Sall right; I approve. There’s nothin’ dishonorable in service. We oughta all learn that. Service is what makes the wheels go round. We all want it, but mighty few of us have learned to give it. But you oughta written, Tom; you oughta let us know where you were.”
“I wanted to go the limit, you see,” explained his son. “I was in touch with Winston. He’d have let you know if things weren’t all right with me. I didn’t want to merely play stiff; I wanted to be a stiff—a floating laborer with no money, no home, no friends to aid him. I wanted to learn all of the ins and outs of their peculiar life. I understand stiffs now. I’ve worked with them—studied them—served them. They’ve helped me. I’ll make a better general manager than if I’d taken hold fresh from college.”
“I’ll say you will!” proudly replied his father, and it was easy to see that Philip Demarest thought this boy of his one of the wonders of the world.
“Besides,” added the son, with an odd little touch of satisfaction, “they’ll tell you at Mangan-Hatton’s that I am a mighty good flunky. Eh, Mr. Mangan? Give me my job back, won’t you?”
There was little time for more conversation then, for the reclaimed derelicts were ravenously hungry, and happy, flustered Mrs. Ehrhart called them to the table in the midst of the merrymaking.
While they were at the table a telephone message came from the sheriff to the effect that Blacky Silk and Kid Strickland had been captured close to Dagget and had cleared up the mystery of the first red-blanket signal.
“I must see old Halfaman Daisy,” said Tom Demarest as they rose from the table. “He’s out of jail, of course?”
“Oh, yes!” Mart piped up. “He come in yistiddy.”
“He came in, Martie,” primly corrected Manzanita.