“Oh, I rummaged ‘em out of a trunk—had almost forgot I had the blamed things. But we used to keep a sharp lookout in the old bandit days—got kinda ready for any suspicious lookin’ riders on the road.” He had spoken while still peering through the binoculars, but now he turned to Jack and proffered him the glasses. “I do wonder what ‘n hell we’re all cornin’ to anyway. This here ranch that we’ve bragged up as bein’ the biggest in all California! Ugh!” The grunt was one of unspeakable disgust. “Take a look for yourself.” Jack turned the glasses in the direction Buck had been gazing, and began to adjust the focus. “What’s the matter now?” he asked. “Matter ‘nough,” growled the storekeeper. “San Antonio Rancho is goin’ to the dogs. Do you see them specks away out yonder in the valley? That’s another band of surveyors. One feller’s peekin’ through a spy-glass set on a tripod; another feller goes ahead and puts up tall stakes with big figgers on ‘em, and the other fellers are chainin’ off the distances. This ‘ere ranch ‘ll surely look like a checker-board blamed soon.” “Progress,” said Jack, laconically. “Progress, hell!” snapped Ashley. “These new fellers that bought the ranch have sure ‘nuff driv’ off all the cattle and now they’re dividin’ up the land. I bet they’ll take the postoffice away from me—not that it pays much, for the Lord knows it don’t—but it brings customers to my store.” “Well, Buck,” said the cowboy, consolingly, “there are lots worse things than moving a postoffice. What’s to prevent your setting up the finest grocery store in the new model city the advertisements speak about?” “That would suit me fine, wouldn’t it?” cried the old storekeeper, with scathing contempt. “Goin’ around in a biled shirt, and handin’ out pencils and chewin’ gum to the little school gals that’ll be swarmin’ all over the place. Not on your life, Jack! I’ll be losin’ both my postoffice and my store in these new-fangled times.” He paused a moment, then his tone changed to one of aggressiveness. “However, they ain’t built their doggoned new town yet, and it’s my belief all this boom talk is just so much hot air.” “In any case you won’t need to worry, Buck, after we get on the tracks of Pierre Luzon again. I intend to find the old squaw’s sand-bar, or my name isn’t Jack Rover.” “And I betche I’m a-goin’ to find Joaquin Murietta’s cache,” concurred the old man with equal determination. Just then Tom Baker slouched out of the store, where he had overheard the conversation. “Oh, things are a-goin’ to turn out all right in the end, boys, don’t fret over that. And there’s one thing gol-dern certain, there’ll be some great things doin’ in this ‘ere valley once they get started on buildin’ the town. The new place will just spring up like Oklahomy City, or Liberal, Kansas, or some of them big towns that had twenty thousand people livin’ in ‘em inside o’ thirty days from the time they were surveyed and laid out.”