XXVII. The Road to Dakota 305
XXVIII. The Recall of Adam Lee 316
XXIX. Concerning the Day Spring Mine 326
XXXI. The Deposed Ruler 350
XXXII. The New Ruler of Carrington 362
XXXIII. A Bountiful Harvest 375

LORIMER OF THE NORTHWEST

PROLOGUE

Fairmead, Western Canada.

It is a still, hot day in autumn, and there is a droning of mosquitoes
where I sit by an open window, glancing alternately out across the
Assiniboian prairie and somewhat blankly at the bundle of paper before me,
ready to begin this story. Its telling will not be an easy matter, but one
finds idle hours pass heavily after a life such as mine has been, and
since the bronco blundering into a badger-hole fell and broke my leg the
surgeon who rode forty miles to set it said that if I was to work at
harvest I must not move before--and the harvest is already near. So I
nibble the pen and look around the long match-boarded hall, waiting for
the inspiration which is strangely slow in coming, while my wife, who was
Grace Carrington, smiles over her sewing and suggests that it is high time
to begin.

There are many guns on the wall glistening like sardines with oil rubbed
well in, and among them the old Winchester which once saved us from
starvation in British Columbia. There are also long rows of painted
butterflies and moths whose colors pleased Grace's fancy when I caught
them in the sloos. Sometimes I wonder whether she really likes that kind
of decoration, or merely pinned them to the wall because I caught them for
her. Then, and this is my own fancy, the bit of the horse which once saved
her life hangs in a place of its own under the heads of the antelopes and
the forward half of a crane with which a Winnipeg taxidermist has
travestied nature. There are also a few oil paintings and, of course, some
furniture, but I am not learned in such matters, and know only that it
cost me many dollars when I brought it from Toronto on one of Grace's
birthdays, and I have never regretted the investment.

No, there is nothing here that merits much comment, though Fairmead is one
of the finest homesteads between the Saskatchewan and the Souris. Then as
I gaze with half-closed eyes through the open window the memories awaken
and crowd, as it were, upon one another. Far out on the rim of the prairie
lies a silvery haze, through which