"South Fork," was all he vouchsafed. "Eleven miles across the mountains," the old man exposited pridefully to Stubener, "an' a trail that'd break your heart." Breakfast consisted of black coffee, sourdough bread, and an immense quantity of bear-meat broiled over the coals. Of this the young fellow ate ravenously, and Stubener divined that both the Glendons were accustomed to an almost straight meat diet. Old Pat did all the talking, though it was not till the meal was ended that he broached the subject he had at heart. "Pat, boy," he began, "you know who the gentleman is?" Young Pat nodded, and cast a quick, comprehensive glance at the manager. "Well, he'll be takin' you away with him and down to San Francisco." "I'd sooner stay here, dad," was the answer. Stubener felt a prick of disappointment. It was a wild goose chase after all. This was no fighter, eager and fretting to be at it. His huge brawn counted for nothing. It was nothing new. It was the big fellows that usually had the streak of fat. But old Pat's Celtic wrath flared up, and his voice was harsh with command. "You'll go down to the cities an' fight, me boy. That's what I've trained you for, an' you'll do it." "All right," was the unexpected response, rumbled apathetically from the deep chest. "And fight like hell," the old man added. Again Stubener felt disappointment at the absence of flash and fire in the young man's eyes as he answered: "All right. When do we start?" "Oh, Sam, here, he'll be wantin' a little huntin' and to fish a bit, as well as to try you out with the gloves." He looked at Sam, who nodded. "Suppose you strip and give'm a taste of your quality." An hour later, Sam Stubener had his eyes opened. An ex-fighter himself, a heavyweight at that, he was even a better judge of fighters, and never had he seen one strip to like advantage. "See the softness of him," old Pat chanted. "'Tis the true stuff. Look at the slope of the shoulders, an' the lungs of him. Clean, all clean, to the last drop an' ounce of him. You're lookin' at a man, Sam, the like of which was never seen before. Not a muscle of him bound. No weight-lifter or Sandow exercise artist there. See the fat snakes of muscles a-crawlin' soft an' lazy-like. Wait till you see them flashin' like a strikin' rattler. He's good for forty rounds this blessed instant, or a hundred. Go to it! Time!" They went to it, for three-minute rounds with a minute rests, and Sam Stubener was immediately undeceived. Here was no streak of fat, no apathy, only a lazy, good-natured play of gloves and tricks, with a brusk stiffness and harsh sharpness in the contacts that he knew belonged only to the trained and instinctive fighting man. "Easy, now, easy," old Pat warned. "Sam's not the man he used to be."