Had not a whole series of clerks, working at white heat between ball-games and vacations, checked his accounts and requested an explanation of his every action for years, just to keep him from this very state of mind—to prevent his fondly imagining that he had accomplished anything? Think of the man who had struggled, under orders, to that forlorn station in 1908, breasting the wind and the sand and a falling thermometer, just to demonstrate scientifically how concrete is mixed in New Jersey. Why, this advising concrete genius drew only two thousand and a per-diem, a man skilled in methods known to the Atlantic seaboard, and aside from his having political influence, was ever ready, under orders, at this pitiful stipend, to place his all-embracing knowledge at the disposal of this non-comprehending desert roughneck, who—Words fail one! As for the Indians to be affected by this change, they were inarticulate and did not count. Someone would be appointed to the vacancy, someone just as good—well, anyway, good enough for Indians. Then came an experience such as a complacent court must suffer when an old monarch dies. It happens, no doubt, when there is a change of chiefs anywhere; but it is the more personal and grinding when one has to live next door to the chief, breakfast with him, lunch with him, dine with him, face him across a desk, or ride cheek-by-jowl with him from daylight to dark; in short, to serve him loyally twenty-four hours the day. Comparisons are not odious; they are hellish. Those so situated as to be thus dependent on one another for duty and society must have some bond of sympathy, something of confidence and regard, respect if nothing more, like unto that which takes the curse off marriage. The living conditions, the lack of society and amusement, the introspection that the Desert invites, these things make the casual word to be an insult and a chance sentence to produce tragedy. Unless it be aboard ship, I know of no relative situation in which one man can become so terrible a burden to others as at an isolated desert-station. Suffice to relate that the period of reconstruction and change brought many disputes, all of them crushed and smothered by the turgid heaviness of forty years’ experience. The new Chief was different, and aged, and sick, a misery to himself and to everyone else. As is invariably the case, the most valuable of the employees began to prepare to quit the ship. I have seen a great deal of loyalty in the West, and the man who is fair may count on men until they drop; but these same men speak their minds freely, and it is hard for them to change czars. Old traditions were restored; the cook quit in a flame of anger, leaving as his vengeance a last meal garnished with a defunct mouse. The pot boiled fifteen hours the day.