"Fine. Come along."
There was a great change in Jim. He must have taken off forty or fifty pounds. His eyes were clear, his skin healthily brown, and he had hardened up all over. He looked a good ten years younger than the last time Al saw him, except for one thing, that his hair had thinned out a great deal. He was almost bald on top.
They shook hands and Jim gave him a solid grip. "Cheese," said the younger fellow heartily, "you look good—primed for a battle, almost." He put his fingers on the other's biceps.
Jim drew up his clenched fist, showing a very respectable bunch of muscle. "More than there ever used to be, eh?" he asked, smiling broadly.
Al whistled, stepped back for a better look at the miracle, and whistled. "And yet they say they never come back. Hm-m-m—how'd you do it?"
"Working. Rousty on a dredge in Oklahoma."
"Rousty?"
"Toted coal to the firemen, later got to firing myself—on the night shift. We kept her going steady. Funny thing, irrigating way out there, t'hell an' gone, in the middle of the frogs barking and the cattle bawling feeding your old thirty-horse and watching the old scoop lifting out her yard of sludge every six minutes. You got so it seemed the most natural thing in the world, but it ain't, is it!"
"What'd they pay!"
"Fifty and board. But the money's being in the business. Me and our day trainman was talking of getting shares in a dredge. There's work there for a thousand years. Where's Georgia?"