Bunny spent his Easter holidays at Paradise, and it happened that Vernon Roscoe paid a visit to the tract. He had been there before, but only while Bunny was away; their meetings so far had been brief ones at the office, amid the press of business. Bunny had got a general impression of a big face and a big body and a big voice. Dad said that “Verne” had also a big heart; but Bunny’s only evidence was that Mr. Roscoe had patted him on the back, and called him “Jim Junior,” with great gusto. Now he came; and it happened that a desert wind came with him, and made a funny combination. As a rule the heat of the day was endurable at Paradise, and the nights were always cold and refreshing; but three or four times in a year the place would be struck by a wind off the desert, and it would be like a hot hand reaching out and holding you by the throat. “A hundred and fourteen in the shade and their ain’t any shade,” was the way the oil workers put it, as they went on working in the sun, drinking barley water by the quart. The worst of it was, the hot wind blew all night, and the houses, which had heated up like furnaces, stayed that way for three or four days. The “oil magnate,” as the newspapers called Vernon Roscoe, left Angel City after dinner, and reached the tract just before midnight. Dad and Bunny were expecting him, sitting out on the veranda, and he saw them, and his voice started before the engine of his car stopped. “Hello, Jim! Hello, Jim Junior! By Jees, what’s this you’re doing to me! Christ amighty, man, I never felt such heat. Is it going to be like this tomorrow? By Jees, I think I’ll turn my tail and run!” He was out of the car, and coming up the path, his face as round as the moon that shone down on his half-bald head. He had taken off his coat and shirt, and was in a pink silk under-shirt; no perspiration, of course, because you were always dry when you drove in this desert heat—you might stop at a filling station and stand under a hose and soak yourself, and the wind would dry everything but your sitting down place in a couple of minutes. “Hello, Verne,” said Dad; and Bunny said, “How are you Mr. Roscoe?” He was careful to get a grip on the magnate’s paw before the magnate got a grip on his—for he would make the bones crunch with his mighty grasp. He had been a cattle-puncher back in Oklahoma, and it was said that he had grabbed a Mexican horse-thief with his two hands and bent him backwards until he broke. He still had that strength, in spite of his rolls of fat. “I’m hot as hell,” he said, answering Bunny’s polite inquiry. “Say, Jim, do you think I’d better stay?” “You’ve got to stay,” said Dad. “I’m not going ahead with development on that Bandy tract till you’ve looked the field over. We’ll sit you on ice.”