The Border Boys in the Canadian Rockies

t you think you're being unne

m, it ain't none of your

mean to m

nd play, kid. D

oing, he for an instant ceased belaboring a dust-covered, cowering lad in pitifully r

6

had hurled out savagely, as eac

vered riding the blind-baggage on the long, dust-covered tr

d the brakeman was now engaged in what he would

n much above sixteen, cowering under the punishment of the burly trainman. The brakeman was not of necessity a brute. But in his eyes

Canadian Rockies, happened to see what was going forward. Without a word he had hastened from them and come to the rescue. Ralph was a boy whose blood always was on fire at the sight of cruelty and oppression, and it appeared to him that the brakeman was being unnec

's eye that held him back. Old "King-pin" Stetson's[8] son looked thoroughly business-like in his broad-brimmed woolen hat, corduroy jacket and trousers, stout hunting boots and f

d toughened Ralph's muscles and bronzed his features, and he looked well equi

ve as he saw some of his mates running toward him from the head of the l

that boy and I'll pay his far

Pay a tramp's fare? Le

9

all day?" demanded the conducto

n ridin' the blind baggage. I was giving him 'what for

y's fare rather than see him abused,

long as he pays his fare, that's all I care. But I ain

demanded the ride stealer, whom

Pass,-yes. Co

me all the fu

ng[10] from their cabs ahead. The brakemen scampered for their cars. The locomotives puffed and

hile you fixed it up. Wis

nd Ralph Stetson, with a rather puzzled expression on his good-looking face, stood confronting the scarecrow-like object he had r

wering above, and in the distance the mighty peaks of the Selkirks looming against[11] the clean-swept blue, the spectacle that this waif of the big towns pre

ou doing at

rk colored rock. Beyond this rose mighty pines, cliffs, waterfalls and, finally, climbing fields of snow. Everywhere peaks and summits loomed with a solitary eagle wheeling

ell yer." He paused, and a strange, wistful look came into his eyes as he[12] gazed at the distant peaks,

? Where did you come

estion, he continued, "You kin call me Jimmie, and e

? Tramped it

couldn't. Bin two munts er more, I reckin. S

think you'd do w

t it don't look much as if there was an

ot. What c

that's on

1

what brought you here, and if you don't want to tell me I won't

ll right, you are, mister. I'll bet you'd have put th

toward the group at the end of the platform. They were standing beside what ap

e, whose full name, H. D. Ware, was, of cours

known to[14] his boyish chums as Persimmons, "grinning gargoyles, we knew this was

rsimmons' odd way of talking and explosive exclamations made e

al good-natured and kindly looking man with a pair of shell-

up to now. I declare, since our experience

tergreen?" asked Ralph. "Well, that lad yonder, if I'm not much[15]

Persimmons was the fir

t brought along enough patent dingbats without your