lantern light, he had backed his horses to the wagon
and hauled it twenty-five miles to the railway at Indian Head. His
stay there had not been conducive to peace of mind.

To reach the rails with a heavy load in favorable weather was simple
enough; it merely required time. But many such trips would be
necessary before his crop was marketed. Some of the farmers from
beyond the Qu'Appelle would be hauling all winter; it was in winter
that the haul was long and cruel. Starting at one, two or three
o'clock in the morning, it would be impossible to forecast the weather
with any degree of accuracy, so that often they would be overtaken by
blizzards. At such times the lack of stopping-places and shelter in
the sparsely settled reaches of the trail encompassed the journey with
risks every whit as real as pioneer perils of marauding Indians or
trailing wolf-packs.

Snow and wind, however, had no place in the thoughts of the lonely
farmer at the moment. Such things he had been used to ever since he
first homesteaded; this long haul with the products of his toil he had
been making for many years. What immediately concerned him was the
discouraging prospect of another wheat blockade instead of any
improvement in conditions which had become unbearable. With the
country as full of wheat as it was this year it required no great gift
of prophecy to foretell what would happen.

It was happening already. The railway people were ignoring completely
the car-distribution clauses of the Grain Act and thereby playing in
with the elevator interests, so that the farmers were going to be just
where they were before--at the mercy of the buyers, their legitimate
profits filched by excessive dockage, low grades, depressed prices,
exorbitant storage charges, even short weights in some cases. All this
in spite of the strong agitation which had led to Government action, in
spite of the Royal Commission which had investigated the farmers'
claims and had recommended the Grain Act, in spite of the legislation
on the statutes! Law or no law, the farmer was still to be preyed
upon, apparently, without a single weapon left with which----

The eyes of the man in the broad-brimmed hat grew grave. Scoff as he
might among the men of the district when the serious ones voiced their
fears to him, his own thoughts always came back to those fears. From
the Red River Valley to the foothills long-smouldering indignation was
glowing like a streak of f