"Hah!" the gaunt face in the rocking chair was scornful, "I merely told you my ranching experience. I've mined with Otto, too, and prospected and herded sheep and cattle and run a boarding house." "Mrs. von Minden, you can't be very comfortable in this rough camp," pleaded Charley. "Do come up to my comfortable house. I'd love to have a woman visitor." "You're very kind, my child, but I must stay here. I've been so ordered." "We'd better be starting back, Charley," suggested Dick. "Felicia is getting sounder asleep every minute." And so the party ended. The erection of the engine house went on briskly. Before even Roger's impatience could have demanded it, the sheet iron roof was on and Schmidt began to putter with the doors and windows. The completed building was not unpicturesque. The dull yellow-gray walls were topped by a roof of red corrugated iron, with deeply projecting eaves. Roger had bought the sheet iron from Dick, who had used considerable of this material in the buildings round his turquoise mine. Ernest and Gustav toiled up to the mine one morning and at night returned with a good supply of the sheet iron. Roger made a concrete base for the engine, at one end of the building. Gustav made two doors, one for either end, by nailing the corrugated iron onto a wooden frame. A work bench and shelves erected by Ernest completed the work on the engine house except for the hanging of the doors. The three workmen were pleased with their job and sat contemplating it in great contentment, one evening after supper. "The engine should be here next month," said Roger. "That is to be of your design?" asked Gustav. Roger nodded. "The Dean of our old college is getting it made for us. He began work on it as soon as we closed the deal with Austin. If he doesn't hustle we'll be ready for it before he is. We'll begin work on the absorber, to-morrow." "I must uphang my door to-morrow," said Gustav. "Vat place did you put the hinges?" "Hinges! By Jove, we haven't a hinge to our names!" exclaimed Ernest. "Dick will have to help us out again." But for once Dick failed them. "It's too bad," he told Ernest the next day, "but I've been meaning to get hinges every time I've gone to town. But I forgot. You'll have to use some stout leather, the way I do." "Well, let me have some leather, then," begged Ernest "Sorry, old chap, but there's not a scrap of leather an inch long around this place. You see I sole Charley's and my shoes, and I've robbed all the mines around here of belting to do it with and that doesn't mean that I've had much belting either. Lots of other people have had the same idea I've had. But take a day off and go up to the Sun's Luck, five miles up that trail yonder and I think you'll find a few pieces." Ernest groaned, then laughed. "Dick, poor old Roger will faint at the idea of more delay, and for hinges! We'd better let the doors go till some of us go into Archer's."