Lanagan had millions, as had his confrères. A few years before he had been a pick-and-shovel miner, as had many of them. But the time had struck for big, crude men, and these had answered the time. There was something elemental about them; and their vigour can be traced to the San Francisco of to-day.
With these men Boyd found himself congenial. They played a healthy game of poker. The projected week or so at Del Monte stretched to over a month. September was well advanced before the Boyds returned to Arguello.
VIII
Kenneth was by these circumstances and this excursion entirely cured of girls; but he was by no means released from uneasiness. His break with Pearl had been too abrupt to be graceful, provided Pearl knew it had taken place. That young lady was probably still living on the memory of his last kisses and expectation of his next. Some sort of explanation must be made, Kenneth fully appreciated that; and he frankly dreaded it.
Therefore it was to his great delight that he found Herbert Corbell possessed a long memory. Early in the spring he had expressed deep interest in Kenneth's sixteen gauge shotgun; and now that the quail season was about to open he put it into practical form by an invitation. Boyd did not see how he could get away at that time—the house was requiring attention—; but neither could he see any reason for Kenneth's refusing. So the latter laid in a canister of Dupont's Medium Ducking, a sack of number eight chilled shot, Eley's cardboard and felt wads, and the requisite primers. On an agreed day he climbed into a buckboard beside a saturnine looking cattleman, and so set forth to new adventures beyond the Sur.
After leaving the Camino Real five or six miles out, the road—narrow, winding, and steep—climbed rapidly the sides of the great range, taking clever advantage of the "hog's backs," diving into and out of shallow canons on hairpin turns, wriggling in lacets where no other footholds offered. At the top they drove for a half mile in a bay-shaded cool little cañon with a singing
