s his name suggested, the
hamlet's oldest settler and its original founder.

His habitation--combining store, post-office, and ranch-house--was a
commodious frame dwelling, unpretentious in appearance but not wanting in
evidences of prosperity. Its rear presented the usual aspect of a ranch,
with huge, well-built barns and corrals. Although it was summer, many
wide stacks of hay and green oats, apparently left over from the previous
season, suggested that he was a cautious man with an eye to stock-feeding
during the winter months. To neglect of the precaution of putting up
sufficient feed to tide over the severe weather might be attributed most
of the annual ranching failures in the West. The MacDavid establishment
bore a well-ordered aspect, unlike many of the unthrifty, ramshackle
ranches, of his neighbours. The fencing was of the best, and there were
no signs of decay or dilapidation in any of the buildings. Dwarf pines
were planted about and a Morning Glory vine over-ran the house, giving
the place an air of restful domesticity. As they entered the store the
trio noticed a saddle-horse tied to the hitching-rail outside.

They were greeted jovially by MacDavid himself. Lounging behind his
store-counter, with his back up against a slung pack of coyote skins, he
was listening in somewhat bored fashion to a talkative individual
opposite. He evidently hailed their arrival as a welcome diversion. In
personality, Morley MacDavid was an admirable type of the western
pioneer. A tall, slimly-built, but wiry, active man of fifty, or
thereabouts, with grizzled hair and moustache. Burnt out and totally
ruined three successive times in the past by the depredations of
marauding Indians, the fierce, indomitable energy of the broken man had
asserted itself and enabled him finally to triumph over all his
mischances. Aided in the struggle by his devoted wife, who throughout
the years had bravely faced all dangers and hardships with him, he had
eventually accumulated a hard-won fortune. In addition to the patronage
that he received from the local ranches, he conducted an extensive
business trading with the Indians from the big Reserve in the vicinity.
A man of essentially simple habits, through sentiment or ingrained
thriftiness, he disdained to abandon the routine and the scenes of his
former active life, although his bank-balance and his holdings in land
and stock probably exceeded that of many a more imposing city magn