CHAPTER

     I ashes of Empire
    II A man of the people
   III the Bostonians
    iv the flesh-pots of Egypt
     V journeys end—­
    VI of the making of laws
   VII the sentimentalists
  VIII the HAYMAKERS
    IX the shocking of Hunnicott
     X without benefit of clergy
    XI the last ditch
   XII the man in possession
  XIII the wreckers
   XIV the gerrymander
    XV the junketers
   XVI sharpening the sword
  XVII the conspirators
 XVIII down, Bruno! 
   XIX deep-sea soundings
    XX the winning Loser
   XXI A woman intervenes
  XXII A borrowed conscience
 XXIII the insurrectionaries
  XXIV into the primitive
   XXV dead water and quick
  XXVI on the high plains
 XXVII by order of the court
XXVIII the night of alarms
  XXIX the relentless wheels
   XXX SUBHI Sadik

TO MY GOOD FRIEND MR. EDWARD YOUNG CHAPIN

THE GRAFTERS

I

ASHES OF EMPIRE

In point of age, Gaston the strenuous was still no more than a lusty infant among the cities of the brown plain when the boom broke and the 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 that day when the advanced guard of Zophar Smith’s ox-train dug wells in the damp sands of Dry Creek and called them the Waters of Merom.

Later, one Jethro Simsby, a Mormon deserter, set up his rod and staff on the banks of the creek, home-steaded a quarter-section of the sage-brush plain, and in due time came 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 water was scarce and hard to come by, drove their stakes along the north line of the quarter-section; and having named their last station Alphonse, christened this one Gaston.

From the stake-driving of the engineers to the spike-driving of the track-layers was a full decade.  For hard times overtook the Western Pacific at Midland City, eighty miles to the eastward; while the State capital, two days’ bronco-jolting west of Dry Creek, had railroad outlets in plenty and no inducements to offer a new-comer.

But, with the breaking of the cloud of financial depression, the Western Pacific succeeded in placing its extension bonds, and a little later the earth began to fly on the grade of the new line 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 in this interval between dawn and daylight Jethro Simsby sold his quarter-section for the nominal sum of two thousand dollars, spot cash, to two men who buck-boarded in ahead of the track-layers.