The Young Engineers in Nevada | Page 2

do?" Tom repeated.
"No-o-o-o," admitted Alf. "But you're older'n me."
"Not so much, as years go," Tom rejoined. "For that matter, if you go on with your cigarettes you'll be an old man before I get through with being a young man. Fill up your chest, Alf; expand it---like this."
As he expanded his chest Reade looked a good deal more like some Greek god of old than a twentieth century civil engineer.
Alf puffed and squirmed in his efforts to show "some chest."
"That isn't the right way," Tom informed him. "Breathe deeply and steadily. Draw in your stomach and expand your chest. Fill up the upper part of your lungs with air. Watch! Right here at the top of the chest."
Alf watched. For that matter he seemed unable to remove his gaze from the splendid chest development that young Reade displayed so easily. Then the boy tried to fill the upper portions of his own lungs in the same manner. The attempt ended in a spasm of coughing.
"Fine, isn't it?" queried Tom Reade, scornfully. "The upper parts of your lungs are affected already, and you'll carry the work of destruction on rapidly. Alf, if you ever live to be twenty you'll be a wreck at best. Don't you know that?"
"I---I have heard folks say so," nodded the boy.
"And you didn't believe them?"
"I---I don't know."
"Why did you ever take up smoking?"
"All men smoke," argued Alf Drew.
"Lie number one. All men _don't_ smoke," Tom corrected him. "But I think I catch the drift of your idea. If you smoke you think men will look upon you as being more manly. That's it, it?"
"It must be manly, if men do it," Alf argued.
"You funny little shaver," laughed Tom, good-humoredly. "So you think that, when men see you smoking cigarettes, they immediately imagine you to be one of them? Cigarette-smoking, for a boy of fourteen, is the short cut to manhood, I suppose."
Tom laughed long, heartily, and with intense enjoyment. At last he paused, to remark, soberly:
"Answering your first question, Drew, I haven't the 'makings.' I never did carry them and never expect to."
"What do you smoke then?" queried Alf, in some wonder. "A pipe?"
"No; I never had that vice, either. I don't use tobacco. For your own sake I'm sorry that you do."
"But a lot of men do smoke," argued Alf. "Jim Ferrers, for instance."
"Ferrers is a grown man, and it would show a lot more respect on your part if a 'kid' like you would call him 'Mr. Ferrers.' But I'll wager that Mr. Ferrers didn't smoke cigarettes at your age."
"I'll bet he did."
"We'll see."
Tom stepped to the doorway of the tent, Alf making way for him, and called lustily:
"Ferrers! Oh, Mr. Ferrers!"
"Here, sir!" answered the voice of a man who was invisible off under the trees. "Want me?"
"If you please," Tom called back.
Ferrers soon appeared, puffing at a blackened corn-cob pipe. He was a somewhat stooped, much bronzed, rather thin man of middle age. Ferrers had always worked hard, and his body looked slightly the worse for wear, though he a man of known endurance in rough life.
"Ferrers, do you know what ails this boy?" demanded Tom.
"Laziness," Jim answered, rather curtly. "You hired him for a chore-boy, to help me. He hasn't done a tap yet. He's no good."
"Don't be too hard on him, Ferrers," pleaded Tom solemnly. "I've just heard the youngster's sad story. Do you know what really ails him? Cigarettes!"
"Him? Cigarettes!" observed Ferrers disgustedly. "The miserable little rascal!"
"You see," smiled Tom, turning to the boy, "just what men think of a lad who tries to look manly by smoking cigarettes."
"Cigarettes? Manly?" exploded Jim Ferrers, with a guffaw. "Men don't smoke cigarettes. That's left for weak-minded boys."
"Say, how many years you been smoking, Jim Ferrers?" demanded Alf, rather defiantly.
"Answer him, please," requested Tom, when he saw their guide and cook frown.
"Lemme see," replied the Nevada man, doing some mental arithmetic on his fingers. "I reckon I've been smoking twenty-three years, because I began when I was twenty-four years old. Hang the stuff, I wish I had never begun, either. But I didn't smoke at your age, papoose. If I had done so, the men in the camps would have kicked me out. Don't let me catch you smoking around any of the work you're helping me on! Is that all, Mr. Reade? 'Cause I've got a power of work to do."
"That's all, thank you," Tom assured him. "But, Ferrers, we'll have to take young Drew in hand and try to win him back to the path of brains and health."
"Say, I don't believe I'm going to like this job," muttered Alf Drew. "I reckon I'll be pulling my freight outer this camp."
"Don't go until tomorrow, anyway," urged Tom. "You'll have to go some distance to find other human beings, and grub doesn't