The Grafters

he junto was born, though its beginnings as a halt camp ran back to the days of the later Mormon migrations across the thirsty plain; to

to be known as the Dry Creek cattle king. And the cow-camp was still Simsby's when the locating engineers of the Western Pacific, searching for tank stations in a land where

imes overtook the Western Pacific at Midland City, eighty miles to the eastward; while the State capital, two

to the west. Within a Sundayless month the electric lights of the night shift could be seen, and, when the wind was right, the shriek of the locomotive whistle could be heard at Dry Creek; and i

banks of Dry Creek-a city consisting as yet only of the Simsby ranch shacks-its western terminus. Thereupon followed one of the senseless rushes that populate the waste places of the earth and give the professional city-builder his reason for being. In a fortnight after the drivi

the region round about lost the word "arid" as a qualifying adjective, and the picturesque fictions of the prospectus makers were miraculously justified. In Year Two there was less rain, but still an abundant crop; and Jethro Simsby, drifting in from some unn

estern Meccas for young men having penetrated to the prov

floor of the Farquhar Building lettered "Attorney and Counselor at Law"; but up to the day in the latter part of the fateful Year Three, when the overdue crash came, he was best known a

e the bread-tackle in the famine time-was his position as local attorney for the railway company. By reason of this he was among the first to have a hint of the impending cataclysm. The Western Pacifi

deed, but the certain and inevitable end of the speculative era. Like every one else, he had bought chiefly wit

n Boston, from whom his hint had come. And when Loring replied that the grading and track-laying contracts were already aw

alty. When it was done he locked himself in his office in the Farquhar Building and balanced the account. On leaving the New Hampshire country town to try the new cast for fortune in the golden West, he had turned his small patrimony into cash-some ten thousand do

ets, he was the one hundred and twenty-seventh man in the queue, which extended around the corner and doubled back and forth in the cross-street to the stoppage of all traffic. The announcement in the Clarion had done

was in the cage with the sweating paying tellers, and it w

e president, reproachfully. "I

hook h

Major. Thank you." And the hundred and twenty-seventh man pocketed his salvage from the wreck and fought his way out through the j

For a week and a day there was a frantic struggle for enlargement, and by the expiration of a f

d hulks by the ebbing tide; others riding by mooring chains which may be neither slipped nor capstaned. When all was over there were deserted streets and empty suburbs in ruthless profusion; but there was also a hungry minority of the crews of the stranded and anchored

bereaved as in Gaston the strenuous; partly, also, because he was a student of his kind, and

Bluebeard admiral there will always be for such stressful occasions, and David Kent, standing aside and growing cynical day by day, lai

e no more argosies drifting Gastonward for the bucaneers to sack and scuttle, it was Jasper G. Bucks who called a conference of his fe

ern Pacific, stopped over a train with Kent. After a rather dispiriting dinner in the deserted Mid-Continent café, and some plowing of the fiel

ive squares intervening had been half measured. "I have had all kinds of a time out here in this God-for

lk had been pointedly reminiscent; of the men of their university year, of mutual friends in the far-away "God's country" to t

ngs that be-and to your prospects, David,"

shr

, as you see; t

ou get out o

place to go to, and no good way to arrive. Like some thou

had some hard knocks, I take it, but if you are the same Dav

ink

e newspapers. No man could live through such an experience as you

owd gathered about the porticoed entrance. As Loring spoke, there was a rattle of snare drums follow

of a State election, and there is to be a political speech-making at the Opera House to-night, with Bucks in the title r?le. And there is a fair measure of the deadness of the town! When you see people flock toget

joined. "If things are as bad as that, it'

sponse. "Only I don't know where to

underous tremolo, dominating the distant band music, thrilled on the still air, and t

d Loring, quick

nging a Bucks crowd to the political rally. Number Three

three-car special as it came clattering in over the switches, and pres

n of the soil for the greater part, bearded and bronzed and rough-clothed, with here and th

nd he was finding the spectacle both instructive and diverting. Looking to Kent for fellowship he saw that his companion was holdi

ow any of the

deep-chested bull-bellow of a

ere, and let's give three cheers and a tail-twister fo

replaced them with a smile. Four times the ear-splitting shout went up, and as the

d syndicates, alien mortgagees, and the Western P

dictive; a nerve-wrenching pandemonium of groans, yelpings and cat-calls, in the mids

ot, I can set it out for you in words. The Western Pacific is the best-hat

allized itself in any such concrete ill will. You must have the whol

plainant against us had the right to pac

it our pricking of the Gaston bub

her western railroad with no competition-has for its motto, 'All the tariff the traffic will stand,' and