Chub sat up in a hurry at that. "Now what are you trying to string me about Denver for?" he demanded. "What's the matter with Phœnix as a place to stay? It ain't so wild and woolly as a whole lot of other places in the West and Southwest; but since you arrived here you've been mighty spry about catching on."
"Phœnix is all right," said Matt. "Wherever I hang up my hat"—and just a shade of wistfulness drifted into his voice as he said it—"is home for me; but the fact of the matter is, Chub, I've got to knock off schooling and get to work—and I've got to do it now."
"You're crazy!" gasped Chub. "Why, you'll graduate in June, and you can't think of leaving school before that."
"I've got to," returned Matt firmly. "I've been rubbing the lamp too long for my own good."
"What do you mean by 'rubbing the lamp'?"
"I've got to bat that up to you, Chub, and when I'm done you'll be the first person I ever told about it. In the first place, I'm a stray—what they call a 'maverick' out here on the cattle-ranges. Everybody calls me King, and I came by the name fairly enough, but for all I know Brown, Jones or Robinson would hit me just as close."
"You're King, all right," declared Chub, with a touch of admiration and feeling, "king of the diamond, the gridiron, the cinder path, the wheel and"—Chub paused "the king of good fellows, with more friends in a minute than I've got in a year."
"And more enemies," added Matt, gripping hard the eager hand Chub reached out to him.
"A chap that don't make enemies is a dub," said Chub. "We've got to be hated a little by somebody in order to keep us gingered up. But go on, Matt. I'll turn down the lights and pull out the tremolo-stop while you tell me the history of your past life."
"I'm going to cut it mighty short, Chub," returned Matt, "and just give you enough of it so you'll understand how I'm fixed. As long as I can remember, and up to a year ago, I was living with a good old man named Jonas King, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. I called him Uncle Jonas, although he told me he wasn't a relative of mine in any way; that so far as he knew I didn't have any relatives, and that he'd given me his name of King as the shortest cut out of a big difficulty. He sent me to school—to a technical school part of the time—but never breathed a word as to who I was or where I had come from. When he died"—Matt paused and looked toward the canal for a moment—"when he died he went suddenly, leaving me by will a fortune of a hundred thousand dollars——"