ked across the hills.

They had turned an angle of the gulch, and on a shelf of level ground,
dishing out from the side of the mountain, stretched the town.

"Isn't it rather odd," said Connor, "for people to build a town over
here when they could have it on the railroad?"

"Maybe it looks queer to some," nodded Townsend.

He closed his lips firmly, determined to imitate the terseness of his
guest; but when he observed with a side-glance that Connor would not
press the inquiry, talk suddenly overflowed. Indeed, Townsend was a
running well of good nature, continually washing all bad temper over the
brim.

"I'll show you how it was," he went on. "You see that shoulder of the
mountain away off up there? If the light was clearer you'd be able to
make out some old shacks up there, half standin' up and half fallin'
down. That's where Lukin used to be. Well, the railroad come along and
says: 'We're goin' to run a spur into the valley, here. You move down
and build your town at the end of the track and we'll give you a hand
bringing up new timber for the houses.' That's the way with railroads;
they want to dictate; they're too used to handlin' folks back East
that'll let capital walk right over their backs."

Here Townsend sent a glance at Connor to see if he stirred under the
spur, but there was no sign of irritation.

"Out here we're different; nobody can't step in here and run us unless
he's asked. See? We said, you build the railroad halfway and we'll come
the other half, but we won't come clear down into the valley."

"Why?" asked Connor. "Isn't Lukin Junction a good place for a village?"

"Fine. None better. But it's the principle of the thing, you see? Them
railroad magnates says to us: 'Come all the way.' 'Go to the devil,'
says we. And so we come halfway to the new railroad and built our town;
it'd be a pile more agreeable to have Lukin over where the railroad
ends--look at the way I have to drive back and forth for my trade? But
just the same, we showed that railroad that it couldn't talk us down."

He struck his horses savagely with the lines; they sprang from the
jog-trot into a canter, and the buckboard went bumping down the main
street of Lukin.

_CHAPTER TWO_

Ben Connor sat in his room overlooking the crossing of the streets. It
was by no means the ramshackle huddle of lean-to's that he had expected,
for Lukin was built to withstand a siege of January snows and
storm-winds which were scoope