Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/229



" man," said O-liver Lee, "should earn more than fifteen dollars a week. After that he gets—soft."

"Soft nothing!"

O-liver sat on a box in front of the post-office. He was lean and young and without a hat. His bare head was one of the things that made him unique. The other men within doors and without wore hats—broad hats that shielded them from the California sun; or, as in the case of Atwood Jones, who came from the city, a Panama of an up-to-the-minute model.

But O-liver's blond mane waved in every passing breeze. It was only when he rode forth on his mysterious journeys that he crowned himself with a Chinese straw helmet.

Because he wore no hat his skin was tanned. He had blue eyes that twinkled and, as I have said, a blond mane.

"Fifteen dollars a week," he reaffirmed, "is enough."

Fifteen dollars was all that O-liver earned. He 223