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, cañons, 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 spare you much more."

"I won't need it," Carter answered, and so took up the case.

Humorously allowing that Cummings had stepped off with the wrong foot, that he and his fellows had no case in law, Carter went on, in short, crisp sentences, to give the number of settlers on the old survey, the acreage under cultivation and of newly broken ground, the lumbering outlook in the spruce forests north of the Park Lands, the number of tye-camps already there established, finishing with a brief description of the rich cattle country the proposed line would tap.

Ten minutes had added themselves to the first while he was talking, but the manager's gray glance had evinced no impatience. "Now," he commented, "we have something to go on. The settlements alone would not justify us in building, but with the lumber – and colonization prospects – " He mused a while, then, after expressing regrets for the haste that called him away, he said, "But if you will put all this and other information into writing, Mr. Carter, I'll see what we can do."

"He's big, the old man." Nodding at the black trail of smoke, the agent thus commented on his superior five minutes later. Then, indicating the deputation which was making its jubilant way back to the clapboard hotel, he said, "They ain't giving you all the credit, are they?"

Shrugging at the last remark, Carter answered the first. "He's a big man, shorely. But, bless you" – he flipped a thumb at the delegation – "they don't see it. Any of 'em is willing to allow that the manager has had chances that didn't fly by his particular roost – just as though the same opportunity hadn't been tweaking him by the nose this last twenty years. There it lay, loose, loose enough for people to break their shins on, till this particular man picked it up. He's big. Puts me in mind of them robber barons you read of in history. Big, powerful chaps, who trod down everything that came in their own way while dealing out a rough sort of justice. There's a crowd" – he looked at the agent interrogatively – "that haven't had what's coming to them. In their times moral suasion, as the parsons call it, hadn't been invented and folks were a heap blooded. A little bleeding once in a while kept down the temperature, and I've always allowed that the barons prevented a sight more murder than they did." Then, nailing his point, he finished: "The historians fixed a cold deck for them like the one they'll deal this general manager. But you can't stop the world. She waggles in spite of them, and it's the big men that make her go. But there! I must eat. What does your ticker say of the express?"

"Half an hour late. You'll just have nice time." And as he watched the tall figure swinging across the tracks, the agent gave words to a thought that was even then in the general manager's mind – "There's a division superintendent going to seed on a farm."

Having made up ten minutes, however, the train rolled in while Carter was still at dinner, and as – for some motive too subtle for even his own definition – he had not mentioned her coming, Miss Helen Morrill had become a subject of bashful curiosity to assembled Lone Tree before he came dashing across the tracks. Apart from his size, sunburn, and certain intelligence of expression, there was really nothing to distinguish this particular young man from the people who, at home, were not on her visiting-list, and if polite the girl turned rather a cold ear to a magnificently evolved and smoothly told set of lies as he escorted her over to the hotel. Morrill was busy with the hay, and as he, Carter, had to come to town for a mower casting he had agreed to bring her out. Her brother was well! A bit delicate! He dare not raise her hopes too high. Oh, he'd pull through! This clear northern air – and so forth.

That clear northern air! Glowing with color, infinite, flat, the prairies basked under the afternoon sun. From the car windows the girl had seen them unfolding: the great screeds of God on which he had written his wonders. Now nothing interposed between her and their vast expanse. Swimming in lambent light they reached out through the quivering distance till merged with the turquoise sky. After she had dined, Carter showed her, from the hotel veranda, the train from which she had dismounted, no larger than a toy, puffing defiance at a receding horizon. Other things he told her – curious facts, strange happenings drawled forth easily with touches of humor that kept her interested and laughing. Not until the moon's magic translated the prairie's golden sheen to ashes, and she unconsciously offered her hand as she rose to retire, did she realize how completely she had cancelled her first impression.

It was then that Lone Tree closed in on Carter with invitations to drink and requests for verification of a theory that the northern settlement was spreading itself on educational lines. "She's a right smart-looking girl," said the store-keeper, its principal exponent, "and Silver Creek is surely going to turn out some scholars."

But he clucked his sympathy when he heard the truth. "An' you say he's having hemerrages? Shore, shore! Here, come over to the store. That girl don't look like she'd been raised on sow-belly, an' sick folks is mighty picky in their eating."

So, by moonlight, the buck-board was loaded up with jams, jellies, fruits, and meats, the best in stock and of fabulous value at frontier prices. While the evil deed was being perpetrated neither man looked at the other. The store-keeper cloaked his villany by learned discourse of freight rates, while Carter spoke indifferently of crops. Only the parting hand-shake revealed each conspirator to the other.