At 29, Jim Bonner is tall at almost six feet and muscled like a man who is no stranger to physical labor, though by no means a roughneck. His movements are always deliberate and controlled. He dresses in ready-made, inexpensive suits (an instructor at University of Pennsylvania isn't that well paid) and, usually, soft caps. His clothes are always well tended to.

He's clean-shaven and his thick, dark hair is kept neatly trimmed. He is better than average-looking and has a charming, slightly lop-sided smile. His laugh is generally a restrained chuckle, not boisterous.

His voice carries a bit of a Western drawl but isn't unpleasant to listen to, even when he is lecturing a class. He speaks well and with an intelligent, educated manner, though he keeps his language fairly simple. He rarely loses his temper and, even when he does, is not given to profanity, especially if ladies are present.

Most of his fellow faculty members and many students are aware that Bonner has a degree in engineering from Colorado School of Mining and used it in the copper mines before the Great War. He was an engineer lieutenant in the Army and stayed on after the Armistice to rectify some of the destruction. He's been a staff instructor at the university for almost two years.

What few know, though some suspect, is that he is a practicing Socialist. Not a revolutionary or Bolshevik, but sympathetic to the goals and needs of the working class and a supporter of labor unionism and government programs to assuage poverty. Labor strife in the West and seeing the rich work the levers of government for their own gain informed his politics.


On a worksite, he wears a battered felt hat, khaki trousers and shirt with a black tie, a scuffed brown leather jacket, and steel-toed boots. He also has a worker's hard-boiled hat or a miner's hat with carbide light, as needed.

In a canvas kit bag he carries a flashlight, several railroad flares, a rock pick, a canteen, binoculars, and a leather case with pencils, pens, a ruler, a magnifying glass, and some common reagents. On his belt he wears a sheath knife and, in snake country, his Army .45 pistol.