It was while they were crossing the street together and turning down toward the Alameda Avenue corner where the Brewster City National Bank windows looked over into the windows of the Hophra House block opposite, that Mr. Crawford Stanton had his third morning caller, a thick-set barrel-bodied man with little pig-like eyes, closely cropped hair, a bristling mustache, and a wooden leg of the home-made sort--a peg with a hollowed bowl for the bent knee and a slat-like extension to go up the outside of the leg to be stapled to a leathern belt. Across one of the swarthy cheeks there was a broad scar that looked, at first sight, like a dash of blue paint. It was a knife slash got in the battle with Mexican Ruiz in which the thick-set man had lost his leg. After the Mexican had brought him down with a bullet, he had added his mark as he had said he would; laying the big man's cheek open and rubbing the powder from a chewed cartridge into the wound. Afterward, the men of the camps called the cripple "Pegleg" or "Blue Pete" indifferently, though not to his face. For though the fat face was always relaxed in a good-natured smile, the crippled saloon-keeper was of those who kill with the knife; and since he could not pursue, he was fain to cajole the prey within reach. Stanton looked up from his desk when the pad-and-click of the cripple's step came in from the street. "Hello, Simms," he said, in curt greeting. "Want to see me?" "Uh-huh; for a minute or so. Busy?" "Never too busy to talk business. Sit down." Simms threw the brim of his soft hat up with a backhanded stroke and shook his head. "It ain't worth while; and I gotta get back to camp. I blew in to tell y'u there's a fella out there that needs th' sand-bag." "Who is it?" "Fella name' Smith. He's showin' 'em how to cut too many corners--pace-settin', he calls it. First thing they know, they'll get the concrete up to where the high water won't bu'st it out." Stanton's laugh was impatient. "Don't make any mistake of that sort, Simms," he said. "_We_ don't want the dam destroyed; we'd work just as hard as they would to prevent that. All we want is to have other people think it's likely to go out--think it hard enough to keep them from putting up any more money. Let that go. Is there any more fresh talk--among the men?" Stanton prided himself a little upon the underground wire-pulling which had resulted in putting Simms on the ground as the keeper of the construction-camp canteen. It was a fairly original way of keeping a listening ear open for the camp gossip. "Little," said the cripple briefly. "This here blink-blank fella Smith's been tellin' Williams that I ort to be run off th' reservation; says th' booze puts the brake on for speed." "So it does," agreed Stanton musingly. "But I guess you can stay a while longer. What do the men say about Smith?"