The Man From The Bitter Roots

Bruce had vowed that so long as a stone remained unturned he would stay and turn it, but--he had run out of stones. Three untried addresses were left in his note-book and he looked at them as he ate his frugal breakfast speculating as to which was nearest.

"If I'd eaten as much beef as I have crow since I came to this man's town," he meditated as he dragged his unwilling feet up the street, "I'd be a 'shipper' in prime A1 condition. I've a notion I haven't put on much weight since it became the chief article of my diet. If thirty days of quail will stall a man what will six weeks of crow do to him? I doubt if I will ever entirely get my self-respect back unless," he added with the glimmer of a smile, "I go around and lick some of them before I leave."

"I suppose," his thoughts ran on, "that it's a part of the scheme of life that a person must eat his share of crow before he gets in a position to make some one else eat it, but dog-gone!" with a wry face, "I've sure swallowed a double portion." Then he fell to wondering if--he consulted his note-book--J. Winfield Harrah had specialized at all upon his method of serving up this game-bird which knows no closed season?

As he sat in Harrah's outer office on a high-backed settee of teak-wood ornate with dragons and Chinese devils, with his feet on a rug which would have gone a long way toward installing a power-plant, looking at pictures of Jake Kilrain in pugilistic garb and pose, the racing yacht Shamrock under full sail, and Heatherbloom taking a record smashing jump, the spider-legged office boy came from inside endeavoring to hide some pleasurable excitement under a semblance of dignity and office reticence.

"Mr. Harrah has been detained and won't be here for perhaps an hour."

"I'll wait," Bruce replied laconically.

The office boy lingered. He fancied Bruce because of his size and his hat and a resemblance that he thought he saw between him and his favorite western hero of the movies; besides, he was bursting with a proud secret. He hunched his shoulders and looked cautiously behind toward the inner offices. Between his palms he whispered: "He's been arrested."

It delighted him that Bruce's eyes widened.

"Third time in a month--speedin' in Jersey--his new machine is 80 horse-power--! A farmer put tacks in the road and tried to kill him wit' a pitchfork. Say! my boss et him. I bet he'll get fined the limit." His red necktie swelled palpably and he swaggered proudly. "Pooh! he don't care. My boss, he--"