“Lucky” Cochran they called him. Also he was eloquent—very. Too muchso, felt David and Goliath. However, they came to think that he was notthe only one that way.
The Westbound Overland on the Santa Fe Railway, although doing itssplendid fifty miles an hour, seemed to two of its passengers to bemoving at a snail’s pace; for the journey ahead of them was long, andtheir destination, which was far northward from San Francisco, the onlyspot on earth worth reaching. To increase boredom they had for so longbeen partners and fellow adventurers that all ordinary topics ofconversation between them had long been exhausted, and the barrenscenery through which they passed was too familiar to be worthy ofinterest.
Furthermore, they had, but a few days previously, escaped from a certaindistrict 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 theywere; miners, prospectors, men of still places where life is crude andhard. 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 forhis stature and a flaming red head that seemed to have defied even thebleaching of the sun. That these two were known to frontiersmen and menof their ilk, over many thousands of miles, as “David and Goliath,”meant nothing to them, nor to any of their fellow passengers; but thatthey had casually reversed a seat in the smoking car and thus sprawledover two seats instead of one did, as a magnet, attract the attention ofa man who wandered inward with a very large and very new alligator-skinsuit case that he dropped in the aisle beside them.
“You boys mind if I sit in this seat?” he demanded, and, although theyvery much did, they promptly lowered their feet to the floor, doubledtheir 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, thesmaller man, replied after a moment’s pause.
“I’m bound for Frisco myself,” the man said, and then as if consideringan introduction necessary, added, “I’m Cochran. ‘Lucky’ Cochran, as theycall me.”
The partners did not appear impressed, or act as if they deemed itincumbent on them to either register surprise, curiosity, or tell himtheir own names.
“Reckon you’ve heard of me—Lucky Cochran?” the newcomer asked with agrin that was entirely self-complacent.
The partners studied him for a moment and then the smaller man said, notwithout 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 ranchat Placides, where they struck oil. I’m the boy they paid twentythousand to last week and— By gosh!—if things go right, I’ll get amillion more.”
Goliath yawned openly, stretched his long legs out into the aisle, andDavid unblinkingly gazed at him as if taking stock of all his newclothing, his diamond stud screwed into a flannel shirt, the diamondring on his heavy, thick-knuckled hands, and thence downward to his bigfeet 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, a