like pie. The hard-workin' plain food is the kind he has to tote, and I
never heard of pie bein' in anybody's grub-stake either.

"Well, fur two or three years at a time the nearest I'd ever get to
them dainties would be a piece of sour-dough bread baked on a
stove-lid. But whenever I was in the big camps I'd always go look into
the bake-shop windows and just gloat.--'rubber' they call it now'days.
My! but they would be beautiful. Son, if I could 'a' been guaranteed
that kind of a heaven, some of them times, I'd 'a' become the hottest
kind of a Christian zealot, I'll tell you that. That spell of gloatin'
was what I always looked forward to when I was lyin' out nights.

"Well, the time before I made the strike I outfitted in Grand Bar. The
bake-joint there was jest a mortal aggravation. Sakes! but it did
torment a body so! It was kep' by a Chink, and the star play in the
window was a kind of two-story cake with frostin' all over the
place--on top and down the sides, and on the bottom fur all I knew, it
looked that rich. And it had cocoanut mixed in with it. Say, now, that
concrete looked fit to pave the streets of the New Jerusalem with--and
a hunk was cut out, jest like I'd always dream of so much--showin' a
cross-section of rich yellow cake and a fruity-lookin' fillin' that
jest made a man want to give up.

"I was there three days, and every day I'd stop in front of that window
and jest naturally hone fur a slice of that vision. The Chink was
standin' in the door the first day.

"'Six doll's,' he says, kind of enticin' me.

"He might as well 'a' said six thousand. I shook my head.