The Freebooters of the Wilderness eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 400 pages of information about The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

The Freebooters of the Wilderness eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 400 pages of information about The Freebooters of the Wilderness.

Don’t smile, self superior reader!  It takes some little time to manufacture a snow slide out of snow flakes; and it may be the law that it also takes some little time to manufacture a soul out of slime.

Passing the Cabin, they again encountered a downy-lipped youth in gray flannels accompanied by a fat gentleman with tortoise-shell eyes and a tallow smile; but the jaunty dimples of the fat man, the supercilious lift of the gray flannel’s eyebrow—­froze mid-way at sight of Meestress Leezie O’Finnigan, who bowed to Bat with the gravity of a mother superior.

“It ain’t the truth I’m tellin’ y’”:  Lizzie was loquaciously going over the story for the twentieth time, “It ain’t the truth I’m tellin’ y’, y’ onderstand; it’s ownly what I’ve heerd.”

The Ranger dropped out of the group at the Cabin.

Bat stood bellicosely scowling at the three figures receding down the Ridge Trail.

“What in Hell is that old parson doing with that Shanty Town kid?  He’d better keep his oar out of this.”

“It’s a free country,” said Wayland dryly.  “Can I do anything for you?”

“We came up to notify you that the mine will be examined to-morrow,” announced the downy lips.

CHAPTER XXIV

I AM UNCLE SAM

“So they would examine the mine to-morrow?  So they had sprung the examination of the coal veins before he could obtain a Government Geologist, and the coal would be pronounced worthless, as the coal involved in the Alaska cases was pronounced worthless by another kindergartner when that contest was impending.  Then, they would argue and consider and send up briefs and send down decisions on the value of the coal till the statutory time had expired and the law of limitations would bar suit for restitution.  Meanwhile, Smelter City Coking Company were using half-a-million tons a year, and sending away as much again; but on the word of an ignorant bureaucratic cub, the coal was to be worthless and the brazen steal of public property to be sanctioned by law.  How much mineral land had been stolen in the very same way in the last ten years, first homesteaded by ‘the dummy’ foreigner, then for five, ten, one-hundred, two-hundred at most three-hundred dollars a quarter section on false affidavit as to entry, length of residence, age of homesteader, turned over to the Ring, whose sworn valuation of the coal ran from $20,000 to $40,000 an acre?” Personally, Wayland, as he thought it over, knew of fifty-thousand acres of coal so stolen in Colorado and as much again in Wyoming; not to mention three-hundred-thousand acres of gold and silver lands looted in the South-West.

And the looters were the party shouting at the top of their voices about “vested rights” and “attacks on property” and “demagoguery producing national hysteria.”  Where was the respect due “the vested rights” belonging to Uncle Sam?  What about the piracy and plunder of the property belonging to Uncle Sam?  Why was it valor to throw a burglar looting your house out by the neck, and “hysteria” to go after a burglar looting Uncle Sam?

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The Freebooters of the Wilderness from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.