Bunny at this time was just beginning an intense experience back at home—his first serious love-affair, about which we shall be told before long. Eunice Hoyt was a rich girl, and complicated; to know her was sometimes pleasure and sometimes torment. But Ruth was a poor girl, and simple; her presence was soothing, calm and still like a Sabbath morning. The basis of Ruth’s life was the conviction that her brother Paul was a great and good man. Now Paul had given up his ten dollar a day job to help the strikers, and Ruth was baking food for the strikers, and while they had money she would sell it to them, and when they had no more money she would give it to them. Meelie, likewise, was delighted to bake for the men, but that was not her only interest in them. The coming of oil to the Watkins tract had meant vast changes in Meelie’s life, she was no longer to be recognized as a goat-herd, but had blossomed out, acquiring sophistication and conversation, and a bright colored ribbon in her hair and a necklace of yellow beads about her neck. Meelie had been to town the evening before, and it had been so exciting! Eli was a full-fledged preacher now, with a church of his own, and was holding services every evening for the glory of the Lord, and great numbers of the strikers had come, and grace had been abounding; and in between the pentecostal manifestations, Meelie had picked up news of the strike—there had been a fight on Main Street because a drunken guard had been rude to Mamie Parsons; and Paul had been one of a committee to see the sheriff and demand that he take either the liquor or the guns away from his deputies; and tomorrow Meelie was going to church again—there would be three services all through the day; and it was said that on Monday the operators were going to bring in strike-breakers, and start the wells flowing on Excelsior Pete; and the men were getting ready to stop that if they could—it would be terrible! Bunny drove to town and wandered about to see the sights, but none of them brought happiness to him. He could not see Paul, for Paul was hard at work in the strike headquarters, and Bunny could not go there, because it would not look right, somebody might think he was spying. No longer was Bunny the young oil prince, flattered and admired by all; he was an enemy, and read hostility in men’s glances, even where there might be none. He was in the position of a soldier in an army, who feels that his cause is unjust, and has no stomach for the fight—yet it is hard to wish one’s self defeat!