al had brought spurs of railroads
bristling into pockets of the wilderness where there had hardly been
"critter trails," and overnight fortunes had sprung into being. Moneyed
interests that centered there would have made the young attorney, who
was also the district's member in Congress, something more than a local
representative, had he not chosen to represent the native holders and to
stand as a buffer between their unsophistication and their would-be
exploiters. But if Boone could set his name to no million-dollar checks
or build himself no colonial mansions, more practice came to the office
where his shingle hung than he and his two new associates could handle.

In other newly developed sections, Boone had seen the native exploited
and embittered. It had been his care that when prosperity came into
Marlin it should come as a blessing to the hill dwellers and not as a
curse. To that end he had locked horns with some adroit and powerful
adversaries, outriders of capital who would have been bandits had the
way lain open. They had first laughed at him, then resolved to crush him
and in the end sought to propitiate him. Finally they gave him his half
of the road and shook their heads in wonderment because he chose the way
of folly and refused to be made deviously rich.

To each new advance he had had one answer: "I belong to these people,
gentlemen. They must be fairly dealt with."

And yet while these mighty transitions worked themselves into being, the
alchemy of the Midas touch left life unchanged back of Cedar Mountain
itself. The brooding range threw its cordon of peaks across the tide of
development and turned it right and left. Not until the many fields
lying virgin and accessible had been worked out, would capital need to
wrestle with engineering assaults upon those sky-high barriers of flint.

And with fidelity to history's ironic precedent, the man whose dream had
been strong in a world of doubters stood by unbenefited, while others
who had not known the nature of a vision reaped wealth. For Larry
Masters had thrown his initial winnings into other speculative
properties. He was the gambler who had won a large bet, and whose
ambition straightway burns to "break the bank." He had bought land in
his own right on a rising tide of values, and he had seen his own veins
of coal narrow to nothing, until his engineers had "pulled the pillars"
and abandoned the lodes. Finding himself ill omened and fallen on desert
sp