exactly the same footing.
After all, they were, in essentials, very much the same, and, when
that is the case, the barriers men raise between themselves do not
count for much in the West, at least. Wheeler, the pulp-mill builder,
who had once sold oranges on the railroad cars, led up to a
conversation that gave Nasmyth an opportunity for which he had been
waiting.

"You and Mattawa are about through with that slashing contract," he
said. "You will not net a great pile of money out of it, I suppose?"

"My share is about thirty," answered Nasmyth, with a little laugh. "My
partner draws a few dollars more. He got in a week when the big log
that rolled on my cut leg lamed me. I seem to have a particularly
unfortunate habit of hurting myself. Are you going back to Ontario
when we get that money, Mattawa?"

"No," the big axeman replied slowly; "anyway, not yet, though I was
thinking of it. The ticket costs too much. They've been shoving up
their Eastern rates."

"You ought to have a few dollars in hand," remarked Nasmyth, who was
quite aware that this was not exactly his business. "Are you going to
start a ranch?"

Mattawa appeared to smile. "I have one half cleared back in Ontario."

"Then what d'you come out here for?" Gordon broke in.

"To give the boy a show. He's quite smart, and we were figuring we
might make a doctor or a surveyor of him. That costs money, and wages
are 'way higher here than they are back East."

It was a simple statement, made very quietly by a simple man, but it
appealed forcibly to those who heard it, for they could understand
what lay behind it. Love of change or adventure, it was evident, had
nothing to do with sending the grizzled Mattawa out to the forests
of the West. He had, as he said, merely come there that his son might
be afforded opportunities that he had never had, and this was
characteristic, for it is not often that the second generation stays
on the land. Though teamsters and choppers to the manner born are busy
here and there, the Canadian prairie is to a large extent broken and
the forest driven back by young men from the Eastern cities and by
exiled Englishmen. Their life is a grim one, and when they marry they
do not desire their children to continue it. Yet, they do not
often marry, since the wilderness, in most cases, would crush the
wives they would choose. The men toil on alone, facing flood, and
drought, and frost, and some hate the silence of the winter nights
du