The fiddle and the figure in the doorway had stirred in Bob a lot of reflections. At twenty he had given up his music and most of the careless fun that went with it, because a sudden jolt had made him see that to win through he must fight and not fiddle. For eight years he had worked tremendously hard at half a dozen jobs across half a dozen states; and there had been plenty of fighting. But what had he won?--a job as a hardware clerk at twenty dollars a week. "Oh, well"--he had learned to give the Mexican shrug of the shoulder--"twenty dollars in a land of opportunity is better than fifty where everything is already fixed." That must be the Red Butte Ranch across yonder. He turned into the left-hand fork of the road. "Hello, there!" A tall, rambling fellow rose up from the side of the road. "Are you the good Samaritan or merely one of the thieves?" "Neither," replied Bob, guessing this was a messenger from the Red Butte, "but I work for both. Where is your balky tractor?" "This way." The rambling fellow turned to the right and started down the road, talking over his left shoulder: "I'm the chauffeur of that blamed tractor--I told Old Benson I didn't know any more about it than he does of the New Jerusalem; but he put me at it anyhow. "I'm a willin' cuss. But the main trouble with me is I ain't got no brains. If I had, I wouldn't be on this job, and if I was, I could fix the darn thing myself. "My dad," continued the guide, "was purty strong on brains, but I didn't take after him much. If I was as posted on tractors as the old man was on hell fire, I wouldn't need you." Something in this hill billy's tone stirred in Bob a sudden recollection. "Was he a preacher?" "Yep, named Foster, and I'm his wandering boy to-night." Bob lifted his head and laughed. It was a queer world. He inquired about the trouble with the tractor. "I sure hope you can fix it," said Noah Ezekiel. "Old Benson will swear bloody-murder if we don't get the cotton in before the tenth of April. He wants to unload the lease." The sun was scarcely an hour high when the steady, energetic chuck, chuck of the tractor engine told Bob his work was done. He shut it off, and turned to Noah Ezekiel. "There you are--as good as new. And it is worth ten men and forty mules. Not much like we used to farm back in the Ozarks, is it?" "We?" Noah Ezekiel rubbed his lean jaw and looked questioningly at the fixer. "I'm from the Ozarks, but as the silk hat said to the ash can, 'Where in hell does the _we_ come in?'" "You don't happen to remember me?" There was a humorous quirk at the corner of Rogeen's mouth as he stood wiping the oil and grease from his hands with a bunch of dry grass. The shambling hill billy took off his floppy-brimmed straw hat and scratched his head as he studied Bob with the careless but always alert blue eyes of the mountain-turkey hunter--eyes that never miss the turn of a leaf nor forget a trail.