Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/111

Rh "He's got it!" they cried. "It's bit him!" "The old cuss has a bad case; he'll come back!"

Boyd stood their banter with a grin that was at first a little shamefaced, but soon became triumphant. His was not a nature to take it lying down.

"Yes, I've got it, you poor nincompoops; and I'm bit. But I'm not coming back. Why? Because I won't have to. I'm going to stay. Just soak that up, will you? You got to go back and attend to your business. I don't have to unless I want to; and I don't want to. While you are sweating away in those pleasant eastern summers, or thawing the icicles out of the whiskers of hope before you can get away next winter, you just think of me right up here, or right down there picking oranges and flowers and filling my system up with this good air!"

"You don't mean that, do you, Boyd?" inquired Saxon, the shoe man.

"Of course I mean it."

"How about your business?"

"To hell with my business! It don't need me any more: and I don't need it."

"I don't know," rejoined Saxon doubtfully. He with the rest was sobered down from vacation irresponsibility by Boyd's decision to do what each had secretly played with as a fascinating but impractical possibility. "How about yourself? You'll get sick of this sort of a thing as a steady diet."

"I'll get me a place," said Boyd, stoutly. "I'll buy me a ranch over the mountains. There's a big future in this place. It's asleep now ; sure thing. But it can be waked up. It ought to be waked up. Judging from what I've seen, that would keep a man busy for a while. Oh, I won't take root, if that's what you mean. You fellows are as blind as bats. All you see is a sleepy little backwater town that you have a good time in. It's got a great future."

"So confounded future that you won't live to see it—except of course that more and more tourists will come in. You aren't going into the resort business, are you, Boyd? " observed someone else.