



Produced by Al Haines.




[Illustration: The Settler]




                              THE SETTLER


                                   BY

                            HERMAN WHITAKER

                               AUTHOR OF
                     "THE MYSTERY OF THE BARRANCA"
                           "THE PLANTER" ETC.



                      HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
                          NEW YORK AND LONDON



                       [Illustration: Title page]




                 COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY HARPER & BROTHERS

                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




                                   TO
                                 ALYSE




                               *CONTENTS*


CHAP.

      I. The Park Lands
     II. A Deputation
    III. The Trail
     IV. The Coyote Snaps
      V. Jenny
     VI. The Shadow
    VII. Mr. Flynn Steps into the Breach
   VIII. When April Smiled Again
     IX. The Devil
      X. Friction
     XI. The Frost
    XII. The Break
   XIII. The Camp
    XIV. The Red Teamster
     XV. Travail
    XVI. A House-party
   XVII. --And Its Finale
  XVIII. The Persistence of the Established
    XIX. The Wages of Sin
     XX. --Is Death
    XXI. Persecution
   XXII. Denunciation
  XXIII. The Charivari
   XXIV. Without the Pale
    XXV. The Sunken Grade
   XXVI. Winnipeg
  XXVII. The Nature of the Cinch
 XXVIII. The Strike
   XXIX. The Bluff
    XXX. Fire
   XXXI. Wherein the Fates Substitute a Change of Bill
  XXXII. The Trail Again




                             *THE SETTLER*



                                  *I*

                            *THE PARK LANDS*


The clip of a cutting axe flushed a heron from the bosom of a reedy lake
and sent him soaring in slow spirals until, at the zenith of his flight,
he overlooked a vast champaign.  Far to the south a yellow streak marked
the scorched prairies of southern Manitoba; eastward and north a spruce
forest draped the land in a mantle of gloom; while to the west the woods
were thrown with a scattering hand over a vast expanse of rolling
prairie.  These were the Park Lands of the Fertile Belt--a beautiful
country, rich, fat-soiled, rank with flowers and herbage, once the
hunting-ground of Cree and Ojibway, but now passed to the sterner race
whose lonely farmsteads were strewn over the face of the land.  These
presented a deadly likeness.  Each had its log-house, its huge tent of
firewood upreared against next winter's drift, and the same yellow
strawstacks dotted their fenceless fields.  One other thing, too, they
had in common--though this did not lie to the eye of the heron--a
universal mortgage, legacy of the recent boom, covered all.

At the flap of the great bird's wing a man stepped from the timber and
stood watching him soar.  He was a tall fellow, lean as a greyhound,
flat-flanked, in color neither dark nor fair.  His eyes were deep-set
and looked out from a face that was burned to the color of a brick.  His
nose was straight and large, cheeks well hollowed; the face would have
been stern but for the humor that lurked about the mouth.  Taken
together, the man was an excellent specimen of what he was--a young
American of the settler type.

"Gone plumb out of sight," he muttered, rubbing his dazzled eyes.  "An'
he wasn't no spring chicken.  Time to feed, I reckon."

A few steps carried him to his team, a rangy yoke of steers which were
tied in the shade.  Having fed them, he returned to his work and chopped
steadily until, towards evening, his wagon was loaded with poplar rails.
Then hitching, he mounted his load and "hawed" and "geed" his way
through the forest.  As he came out on the open prairie the metallic
rattle of a mower travelled down the wind.  Stopping, he listened, while
a shadow deepened his tan.

"Comes from Morrill's big slough," he muttered, whipping up the oxen.
"Who'll it be?"

Morrill, his near neighbor, was sick in bed, and the rattle could only
mean that some one was trespassing on his hay rights--or rather the
privilege which he claimed as such--for trespass such as he suspected
was simply the outward sign of a change in the settlement's condition.
In the beginning the first-comers had found an abundance of natural
fodder growing in the sloughs, where, for lack of a water-shed, the
spring thaws stored flood-waters.  There was plenty then for all.  But
with thicker settlement anarchy ensued.  New neighbors grabbed sloughs
on unsettled lands, which old-timers had sealed to themselves, and so
forced them to steal from one another.  Morrill and the man on the wagon
had "hayed" together for the last three seasons, which fact explained
the significance he attached to the rattle of the alien mower.

"It's Hines!" he muttered when, five minutes later, he sighted the mower
from the crown of a roll.  "The son of a gun!"

The man was running the first swath around a mile-long slough which lay
in the trough of two great rolls. It was a pretty piece of hay, thick,
rank, and so long that one might have tied two spears together across a
horse's back.  Indeed, when the settler rattled down the bank and
stopped his oxen they were hidden to the horns, which fact accounted for
Hines not seeing them until his team brought against the load.

"Hullo!" he cried, startled.  "Didn't expect to see you, Carter!"

"Don't reckon you did," the settler replied.  The shadow was now gone
from his face.  Cool, cheerful, unconcerned, he sat in the mower's path,
swinging an easy leg.

Hines gave him an uneasy glance.  "Been cutting poles?" he asked,
affecting nonchalance.

"Yes.  Corral needed raising a couple of rails," Carter carelessly
answered.

Encouraged, Hines made an observation about the crops which the other
answered, and so the talk drifted on until Hines, feeling that he had
established a footing, said, "Well, I must be moving."  But as he backed
his horses to drive around, the steers lurched forward and again blocked
the way.

"Pretty cut of hay this."  Carter ignored the other's savage glance.
"Ought to turn Morrill thirty tons, don't you reckon?"

Hines shuffled uneasily in the mower seat.  "I didn't allow," he
growled, "as Morrill would want hay this year?"

"No?"  The monosyllable was subtly sarcastic.

Hines flushed.  "What kin a dead man do with hay?" he snarled.

"Is Morrill dead?"

"No!  But Doc Ellis tol' me at Stinkin' Water as he couldn't live
through winter."  He almost yelled it; opposition was galling his savage
temper.

"So you thought you'd beat the funeral?" Carter jeered.  "Savin' man!
Well--he ain't dead yet?"

The challenge was unmistakable.  But though brutal, ferocious as a wolf,
Hines shared the animal's preferences for an easy prey.  Corner him and
he would turn, snarling, but his was the temper which takes no chances
with an equal force.  Now he lived up to his tradition. Viciously
setting his teeth, he awaited the other's action.

But Carter was in no hurry.  Leaning back on his load, he sprawled at
ease, turning his eyes to the fathomless vault above.  Time crept on.
The oxen ceased puffing and cropped the grass about them, the horses
switched impatience of the flies.  The sun dropped and hung like a split
orange athwart the horizon, the hollows blued with shadows, which
presently climbed the knolls and extinguished their golden lights.  Soon
the last red ray kindled the forest, silver specks dusted the darkening
sky, only the west blushed with the afterglow.

Hines tired first.  "Quitting-time," he growled, backing his horses.

"Took you a long time to find it out," Carter drawled, giving the words
a significance the other had not intended.  "But grace is always waiting
for the sinner.  So long!  But say!" he called after the disappearing
figure, "if you hear any one inquiring after this slough, you can tell
them as Merrill's goin' to cut it to-morrow."

Whipping up his oxen, he swung up the bank and headed south on Merrill's
hay trail.  Fresh from their rest, the steers stepped out to a lively
rattling of chains, and in a quarter of an hour stopped of their own
volition before his cabin.

As Carter entered, the sick man leaned on his elbow and looked up at his
magnificent inches: he loomed like a giant in the gloom of the cabin.
There was envy in the glance but no spite.  It was the look the sick
bestow on the rudely healthy.  For Carter's physique was a constant
reminder to Morrill of his own lost strength--he had been a college
athlete, strong and well set-up, the kind of man to whom women render
the homage of a second lingering glance.  Three years ago, inherited
lung trouble had driven him from the Eastern city in which he had laid
the foundation of a pretty law practice, but the dry air and open life
of the central plains had not checked the ravages of the disease.
Still, though but the wraith of his former self, he had kept a brave
face, and now he cheerfully answered Carter's greeting.

"Cast your eye over this," he said, holding out an open letter.  "It's
from my sister Helen."

Handling it as tenderly as though it were a feather from the wing of
love, Carter held the letter to the lamp. It was written in a small,
feminine hand which took all manner of flourishes unto itself as it ran
along the lines. Carter regarded them with a look in which surprise
struggled with respect.  "Oh, shore!" he laughed at last.  "Them curly
cues is mighty pretty, Bert, but it would take too long for me to cipher
'em out.  What's it all about?"

"She's coming out.  Arrives in Lone Tree day after to-morrow."

"Phew!" Carter whistled.  "Short notice."

He thoughtfully stroked his chin.  Lone Tree lay sixty miles to the
south and the Eastern mail-train came in at noon.  But this was not the
cause of his worry. His ponies could cover the distance within the time.
But there was Hines.  If he did not try the slough, others might.
Morrill mistook his silence.

"I hate to ask you to go," he said, hesitatingly. "You've done so much
for me."

"Done nothing," the big man laughed.  "'Twasn't that. Jes' now I warned
Hines off that big slough o' yours, an' I intended to begin cutting it
to-morrow morning."

Morrill impulsively extended his hand.  "You're a good fellow, Carter."

"Shucks!" the other laughed.  "Ain't we two the only Yanks in these
parts?  But say! won't she find this a bit rough?"

Morrill glanced discontentedly at the log walls, the soap-boxes which
served for seats, the home-made table, and the peg ladder that led to
the loft above.  Three years' hard work had rubbed the romance from his
rough surroundings, but he remembered that it had once been there.  "Oh,
I don't know," he answered. "She'll like it.  Has all the romantic
notions about keeping home in a log-house, you see."

"Never had 'em," the other mused, "though mebbe that was on account of
being born in one.  What's bringing her out?"

"Well, now that father's dead I'm all the kin she's got.  He didn't
leave anything worth mentioning, so Helen has to choose between a place
in a store and keeping house for me.  But say! your team's moving! Don't
tell her I'm sick," he called, as Carter rushed for the door.  "She'd
worry, and think I was worse than I am."

"Couldn't very well," Carter muttered, as he ran after his team.  "No,
she really couldn't," he repeated, as he caught up and climbed upon his
load.  "Poor chap!--An' poor little girl!"




                                  *II*

                             *A DEPUTATION*


Fifty miles in a day is big travel in the East, yet a team of northern
ponies will, if the load be light, run it on three legs.  The fourth,
unless cinched with a kicking-strap, is likely to be in the buck-board
half the time; but if the driver is good at dodging he need not use a
strap.

Starting next morning at sunrise, Carter ran through the settlements,
fed at the mission in the valley of the Assiniboin at noon, then,
climbing out, he rattled south through the arid plains which cumber the
earth from the river to Beaver Creek.  There Vickery, the keeper of the
stopping-house, yelled to him to put in and feed.  He had not seen a man
for two weeks, and his wells of speech were full to overflowing.  But
Carter shook denial.  Far off a dark smudge rose from under the edge of
the world--the smoke of the express, he thought.  One would have
believed it within a dozen miles, yet when, an hour later, he rattled
into Lone Tree, it seemed no nearer than when first it impinged on the
quivering horizon.  This appearance, however, was deceptive as the
first, for he had scarcely unhitched at the livery before an engine and
two toy cars stole out from under the smudge.

"General manager's private car," the station agent answered Carter's
inquiry.  "The old man lays over here to talk with a deputation.  It's
over at the hotel now, feeding and liquoring up."

"The old grievance?" Carter asked.

The agent nodded.  "That and others.  They say we're coming their flesh
and blood.  You should hear old man Cummings orate on that.  And they
accuse us of exacting forty bushels of wheat out of every hundred we
tote out to the seaboard."

"Wheat at forty-five, freight to Montreal at twenty-seven?" Carter
mused.  "Don't that pretty near size it, Hooper?"

"Is that our fault?" the agent ruffled, like an irate gobbler.  "Did we
freeze their wheat?  Sound grain is worth sixty-eight, and if they will
farm at the north pole they must expect to get frozen."

"And if you will railroad at the north pole," Carter suggested, "you
ought to--"

"Get all that's coming to us," the agent finished. "But we don't.  Our
line runs through fifteen hundred miles of country that don't pay for
axle-grease.  We must make running expenses, and ought to pay a
reasonable interest to our stockholders, though we haven't yet.  The
settled lands have to bear hauling charges on the unsettled.  But these
fellows don't see our side of it.  Where would they be without the line,
anyway? Now answer me that, Carter."

"Back East, landless, homeless, choring for sixteen a month an' board,"
Carter slowly answered.  "I'm not bucking your railroad, Hooper.  But
here's the point--your people and the government sent out all sorts of
lying literature an' filled these fellows with the idea that they were
going to get rich quick; whereas this is a poor man's country an' will
be for a generation to come.  Five generations of farmers couldn't have
built this line which one generation must pay for.  There's the point.
They've clapped a mortgage an' a fifteen-hundred-mile handicap on their
future, an' the interest is going to bear their noses hard down on the
grindstone. They'll make a living, but they ain't going to have much of
a time.  Their children's children will reap the profit off their
sweat."

"No," the agent profanely agreed, "they ain't going to have a hell of a
time."  Having spent his mature years in one continuous wrangle over
freights and rates, it was positively disconcerting to find a farmer who
could appreciate the necessities of railroad economics, and after a
thoughtful pause the agent said, "You ain't so slow--for a farmer."

"Thank you," Carter gravely answered.  "Some day, if I'm good, I may
rise to the heights of railroading."

The agent grinned appreciatively.  "Coming back to the deputation, these
fellows might as well tackle a grizzly as the old man.  There's not
enough of you to supply grease for a freight-train's wheels."

"Oh, I don't know," Carter gently murmured.

Ten minutes ago the agent would have hotly proved his point; now he
replied, quite mildly: "If you think different, tag on to the
deputation.  Here it comes, all het-up with wrongs and whiskey."

"There's Bill Cummings!" Carter indicated an elderly man, very white of
beard, very red of face, and transparently innocent in expression.

"He's bell-wether," the agent said, grinning.  Then, as the approaching
locomotive blew two sharp blasts, he added, "Blamed if the old man won't
make mutton of the entire flock if they don't clear out of the way!"

A quick scattering averted the catastrophe while increasing the heat of
the deputation.  Very much disrumpled, it filed into the car, with
Carter tagging on behind.

The general manager, who was smoking by an open window, tossed out his
cigar as he rose.  Not a tall man, power yet expressed itself in every
movement of his thick-set body; it lurked in his keen gray glance; was
given off like electrical energy in his few crisp words of welcome.
From the eyes, placed well apart in the massive head, to the strong jaw
his every feature expressed his graduation in the mastership of men;
told eloquently of his wonderful record, his triumphs over man and
nature.  Beginning a section hand, he had filled almost every position
in the gift of his road, driving spikes in early days with the same
expertness he now evidenced in directing its enormous affairs--the road
which had sprung from his own fertile imagination; the road which, from
nothing, he had called into being.  Where others had only discerned
mountains, gulfs, canons, trackless forest, he had seen a great trunk
line with a hundred feeders--mills, mines, factories, farms, and
steamships plying to the Orient for trade. And because his was the faith
that moves mountains, the magnificent dream had taken form in wood and
iron.

Purblind to all but their own interests, the settlers saw only the
proximate result of that mighty travail--the palace-car with its
luxurious fittings.

"We pay for this," Carter's neighbor growled.

"My, but I'd like his job!" another whispered.  "Nothing to do but sit
there and dictate a few letters."

A third gave the figures of the manager's salary, while a fourth added
that it was screwed out of the farmers. So they muttered their private
envy while Cummings voiced their public grievance.  When surveys were
run for the trunk line, settlers had swarmed in, pre-empting land on
either side of the right of way, and when, to avoid certain engineering
problems, the surveys were shifted south, they found themselves from
fifty to sixty miles from a market.  A branch had been promised--

"When settlement and traffic justify it."  The manager cut the oration
short.

He had listened quietly while Cummings talked of rights, lawsuits, and
government intervention; now he launched his ultimatum on the following
silence: "Gentlemen, our road is not run for fun, but profit, and though
we should very much like to accommodate you, it is impossible under the
circumstances.  I am pleased to have met you, and"--the corners of the
firm mouth twitched ever so slightly--"and I shall be pleased to meet
you again when you can advance something more to our advantage than
costs and suits.  I bid you good-day."

Business-like, terse, devoid of feeling, the laconic answer acted upon
the deputation like a blow in the face. Cummings actually recoiled, and
his expression of sheep-like surprise, baffled wonder, innocent anger
set Carter chuckling.  He was still smiling as he shouldered forward.

"A minute, please."

The manager glanced at his watch.  "I can't