William Massarene was a short, broad, heavily-built man, like his wife in feature, and having, like her, a muddy-pale complexion which the Sierra suns had had no force to warm and the cold blasts of the North Pacific no power to bleach. His close-shut, thin, long lips, his square jaw, and his intent gray eyes, showed, however, in his countenance, a degree of volition and of intelligence which were his portion alone, and with which hers had no likeness. He was a silent, and seemed a dull, man; but he had a clear brain and a ruthless will, and he had in its full strength that genius for making money which is independent of education and scornful of culture, yet is the only original offspring of that modern life in which education is an institution and culture is a creed. When he had been only eighteen years of age he had married Margaret Hogan, because she was a stout strong hard-working wench, and had at once taken a steerage ticket to New York. When he reached the United States he had gone straightway to the new settlements in North Dakota, where cities consisted of plank-walks and shingle-roof shanties, and where the inhabitants of those cities were rougher and ruder even than himself. He had scent for wealth as a thirsty steer for distant water-springs, and he said to himself: “I won’t leave off till I’m second to Jay Gould.” He began very modestly by employing himself as a pig-sticker and opening a pork shop in a town called Kerosene. His wife made and fried sausages to perfection. The shop became a popular resort, and, in the back room, miners, diggers, cattlemen, and all the roughs for miles around came to eat sausages, and found drinks, hot as flame, and play _ad libitum_. Sometimes they staked nuggets, and lost them. William Massarene never played, he only watched the gamblers, and when they wanted money lent it to them, or if they sold a nugget bought it. They were a wild lot who cared neither for man nor devil; but he knew how to keep them in order with his cold grey eyes and his good six-shooter. Many swore that they would kill him or rob him; but nobody ever did either, though several tried to do both. His wife was liked; hard-worked as she was she found time to do a good turn to sick neighbors unknown to him; and more than one rough fellow spared him because she had been kind to his kids or had brought some broth to his girl. The sausage-shop in dreary, dirty, plank-made Kerosene City was the foundation of his fortune. How the place had stunk and how it had reeked with tobacco stench and echoed with foul outcries and the blows and shots of ruined and reckless men! Margaret Massarene often dreamt of it, and when she did so dream, woke, bathed in sweat, and filled with nameless terror. Her husband never dreamed, except when wide-awake and of his own glories.