HE Westbound Overland on the Santa Fe Railway, although doing its splendid fifty miles an hour, seemed to two of its passengers to be moving at a snail’s pace; for the journey ahead of them was long, and their destination, which was far northward from San Francisco, the only spot on earth worth reaching. To increase boredom they had for so long been partners and fellow adventurers that all ordinary topics of conversation between them had long been exhausted, and the barren scenery through which they passed was too familiar to be worthy of interest.
Furthermore, they had, but a few days previously, escaped from a certain district in Mexico where for a brief time they had gambled their lives, and were still too glad of escape to indulge in foolish conversation. The veriest fool could not have mistaken them for other than what they were; miners, prospectors, men of still places where life is crude and hard. There was nothing to distinguish them or attract a second glance, other than their incongruity of size; for one was a magnificent giant, and the other a blocky, stocky runt, with shoulders much too large for his stature and a flaming red head that seemed to have defied even the bleaching of the sun. That these two were known to frontiersmen and men of their ilk, over many thousands of miles, as “David and Goliath,” meant nothing to them, nor to any of their fellow passengers; but that they had casually reversed a seat in the smoking car and thus sprawled over two seats instead of one did, as a magnet, attract the attention of a man who wandered inward with a very large and very new alligator-skin suit case that he dropped in the aisle beside them.
“You boys mind if I sit in this seat?” he demanded, and, although they very much did, they promptly lowered their feet to the floor, doubled their tired legs back into cramped postures, and told him to “set in.”
“Goin’ far?” he asked, before his weight had settled.
“Clean through to Los Angeles, then to San Francisco,” David, the smaller man, replied after a moment’s pause.
“I’m bound for Frisco myself,” the man said, and then as if considering an introduction necessary, added, “I’m Cochran. ‘Lucky’ Cochran, as they call me.”
The partners did not appear impressed, or act as if they deemed it incumbent on them to either register surprise, curiosity, or tell him their own names.
“Reckon you’ve heard of me—Lucky Cochran?” the newcomer asked with a grin that was entirely self-complacent.
The partners studied him for a moment and then the smaller man said, not without a suggestion of disapproval, “Nope. Can’t say I ever did. Why?”
“Never heard tell of me? Lucky Cochran? I’m the man that owned the ranch at Placides, where they struck oil. I’m the boy they paid twenty thousand to last week and By gosh!—if things go right, I’ll get a million more.”
Goliath yawned openly, stretched his long legs out into the aisle, and David unblinkingly gazed at him as if taking stock of all his new clothing, his diamond stud screwed into a flannel shirt, the diamond ring on his heavy, thick-knuckled hands, and thence downward to his big feet that were incased in patent-leather shoes of a design affected by “sporting gents” of the previous decade.
“Humph! He looks it, don’t he?” David said, turning toward his partner. As if his attention had just been casually called to something outside, Goliath, in turn, appraised Mr. Cochran and then rumbled, “He sure does!”
Entirely unabashed by their comments, Mr. Cochran seemed, on the contrary, to be highly pleased.
“That’s me!” he remarked. “Lucky Cochran! That’s me, boys.” And then, as if stimulated to speech, he began talking. He told them the history of his new wealth, of his lean years, of where he had originated. He even told them stories. His tongue wagged as if on a pivot, pendulous, and the fact that neither of them evidenced the slightest interest, or interpolated any remarks, did not in the least curb his loquacity.