The Trasks were well established in Salinas. Lee, once he had given up his brackish bookish dream, made a new kind of place for himself in the house beside Reynaud’s Bakery. On the ranch his possessions had never really been unpacked, for Lee had lived poised to go someplace else. Here, for the first time in his life, he built a home for himself, feathered with comfort and permanence.

The large bedroom nearest the street door fell to him. Lee dipped into his savings. He had never before spent a needless penny, since all money had been earmarked for his bookstore. But now he bought a little hard bed and a desk. He built bookshelves and unpacked his books, invested in a soft rug and tacked prints on the walls. He placed a deep and comfortable “Morris chair under the best reading lamp he could find. And last he bought a typewriter and set about learning to use it.

Having broken out of his own Spartanism, he remade the Trask household, and Adam gave him no opposition. A gas stove came into the house and electric wires and a telephone. He spent Adam’s money remorselessly—new furniture, new carpets, a gas water-heater, and a large icebox. In a short time there was hardly a house in Salinas so well equipped. Lee defended himself to Adam, saying, “You have plenty of money. It would be a shame not to enjoy it.”

“I’m not complaining,” Adam protested. “Only I’d like to buy something too. What shall I buy?”

“Why don’t you go to Logan’s music store and listen to one of the new phonographs?”

“I think I’ll do that,” said Adam. And he bought a Victor victrola, a tall Gothic instrument, and he went regularly to see what new records had come in.

The growing century was shucking Adam out of his shell. He subscribed to the Atlantic Monthly and the National Geographic. He joined the Masons and seriously considered the Elks. The new icebox fascinated him. He bought a textbook on refrigeration and began to study it.

The truth was that Adam needed work. He came out of his long sleep needing to do something.

“I think I’ll go into business,” he said to Lee.

“You don’t need to. You have enough to live on.”

“But I’d like to be doing something.”

“That’s different,” said Lee. “Know what you want to do? I don’t think you’d be very good at business.”

“Why not?”

“Just a thought,” said Lee.

“Say, Lee, I want you to read an article. It says they’ve dug up a mastodon in Siberia. Been in the ice thousands of years. And the meat’s still good.”

Lee smiled at him. “You’ve got a bug in your bonnet somewhere,” he said. “What have you got in all of those little cups in the icebox?”

“Different things.”

“Is that the business? Some of the cups smell bad.”

“It’s an idea,” Adam said. “I can’t seem to stay away from it. I just can’t seem to get over the idea that you can keep things if you get them cold enough.”

“Let’s not have any mastodon meat in our icebox,” said Lee.

If Adam had conceived thousands of ideas, the way Sam Hamilton had, they might all have drifted away, but he had only the one. The frozen mastodon stayed in his mind. His little cups of fruit, of pudding, of bits of meat, both cooked and raw, continued in the icebox. He bought every available book on bacteria and began sending for magazines that printed articles of a mildly scientific nature. And as is usually true of a man of one idea, he became obsessed.

Salinas had a small ice company, not large but enough to supply the few houses with iceboxes and to service the ice-cream parlors. The horse-drawn ice wagon went its route every day.

Adam began to visit the ice plant, and pretty soon he was taking his little cups to the freezing chambers. He wished with all his heart that Sam Hamilton were alive to discuss cold with him. Sam would have covered the field very quickly, he thought.

Adam was walking back from the ice plant one rainy afternoon, thinking about Sam Hamilton, when he saw Will Hamilton go into the Abbot House Bar. He followed him and leaned against the bar beside him. “Why don’t you come up and have some supper with us?”

“I’d like to,” Will said. “I’ll tell you what—I’ve got a deal I’m trying to put through. If I get finished in time I’ll walk by. Is there something important?”

“Well, I don’t know. I’ve been doing some thinking and I’d like to ask your advice.”

Nearly every business proposition in the county came sooner or later to Will Hamilton’s attention. He might have excused himself if he had not remembered that Adam was a rich man. An idea was one thing, but backed up with cash it was quite another. “You wouldn’t entertain a reasonable offer for your ranch, would you?” he asked.

“Well, the boys, particularly Cal, they like the place. I think I’ll hang on to it.”

“I think I can turn it over for you.”

“No, it’s rented, paying its own taxes. I’ll hold on to it.”

“If I can’t get in for supper I might be able to come in afterward,” said Will.

Will Hamilton was a very substantial businessman. No one knew exactly how many pies his thumb had explored, but it was known that he was a clever and comparatively rich man. His business deal had been non-existent. It was a part of his policy always to be busy and occupied.

He had supper alone in the Abbot House. After a considered time he walked around the corner on Central Avenue and rang the bell of Adam Trask’s house.