"You let up before supper-time?" said one.
"I did," said Brooke, a trifle grimly. "I broke up the Kenawa planer in the Tomlinson mill. That's why I came away. I'm not going back again."
One of the men laughed softly. "Then it was only the square thing. Since we've been here that planer has broke up two or three men. Held out a month, didn't you? What were you at before that?"
"Road-making, firing at a cannery, surrey packing. I've a ranch that doesn't pay, you see?"
The other man smiled again. "So have we! Half the deadbeats in this country are landholders, too. Two men couldn't get away with many of the big trees on our lot in a lifetime, and one has to light out and earn something to put the winter through. This month Jake and I have made 'bout twenty dollars between us. I guess your trouble's want of capital—same as ours. One can't do a great deal with a hundred dollars. Still, you'd have had more than that when you came in?"
"I had," said Brooke, drily. "I put six thousand into the land, or rather the land-agent's bank, besides what I spent on clearing a little of it, and when I've paid my board and for the clothes I bought, I'll have about four dollars now."
"That's how those land-company folks get rich," said one of the men. "Was it a piece of snow mountain he sold you, or a bottomless swamp?"
"Rock. One might have drained a swamp."
The men smiled. "Well," said the first of them, "that's not always easy. A man's not a steam navvy—but the game's an old one. It was the Indian Spring folks played it off on you?"