ith Seaforth beside him,
and Horton, got up in a frayed-out white shirt from which his bony
wrists and red neck protruded grotesquely, at the foot. The rest sat
on the table and sundry boxes and barrels smoking tranquilly. They
were, for the most part, silent men who waged a grim and ceaseless
warfare with the forest, and disdained any indication of curiosity.
Nobody asked a question, but the steady eyes which watched the convener
of the meeting were mildly inquiring when he rose up.

"I sent for you, boys, because it seemed the fairest thing," he said.
"Now somebody has got to take hold with a tight grip if the dollars
that are coming into it are to go to the men who have done the work in
this valley. You have seen what has happened down Washington and
Oregon way, and we don't any of us want it here in Canada. When the
good time came was it the man who'd put in his twelve hours daily with
the axe and crosscut who got the dollars, or the one who lived soft in
the cities?"

There was a little growl from several among the assembly, for most of
those who sat there realized that it was usually the mortgage broker
and speculator who reaped where the toilers with axe and saw had sown.

"There'll have to be laws made to hold them fellows' grip off the poor
man." said somebody.

Alton laughed a little. "Well," he said dryly, "it seems to me that
the poor man should do a little of the holding off himself. Now I want
you to listen carefully. Within twelve months you'll see a new
wagon-road cut south towards the big river, and inside two years the
surveyors running the line for a new railroad into the Somasco valley."

The men stared at the speaker, and there was a murmur, almost of doubt,
and wonder. They knew what that promise meant, and it implied the
opening of mines and mills, a market for all they could raise on the
spot, and the quadrupling in value of every ranch. Alton sat quietly
imperturbable at the head of the table.

"And you believe the thing's going to be?" said somebody.

"I think," said Alton quietly, "I have just told you so."

There was another murmur, of strong and patient men's unexpressed
exultation, and Seaforth noticed that they had accepted his comrade's
statement, without further question, implicitly. They were in some
respects simple, and the complex life of the cities was unknown to most
of them, but they had seen human nature stripped of its veneer in the
bush and understood it well.