come back to us. You belong to the prairie, and it’s a better place than this.”
He spoke at an opportune moment. Since her cherished ambition had failed her, Hetty Torrance had grown a trifle tired of the city and the round of pleasure that must be entered into strenuously, and there were times when, looking back in reverie, she saw the great silent prairie roll back under the red sunrise into the east, and fade, vast, solemn, and restful, a cool land of shadow, when the first pale stars came out. Then she longed for the jingle of the bridles and the drumming of the hoofs, and felt once more the rush of the gallop stir her blood. But this was what she would not show, and her eyes twinkled a trifle maliciously.
“Well, I don’t quite know,” she said. “There is always one thing left to most of us.”
She saw the man wince ever so slightly, and was pleased at it; but he was, as she had once told him in the old days, grit all through, and he smiled a little.
“Of course!” he said. “Still, the trouble is that there are very few of us good enough for you. But you will come back for a little?”
Miss Torrance would not commit herself. “How are they getting along at the Range?”
“Doesn’t your father write you?”
“Yes,” said the girl, colouring a trifle. “I had a letter from him a few days ago, but he seldom mentioned what he was doing, and I want you to tell me about him.”
The man appeared thoughtful. “Well,” he said, “it’s quite three months since I spoke to him. He was stirring round as brisk as ever, and is rolling the dollars in this year.”
“But you used to be always at the Range.”
The man nodded, but the slight constraint that was upon him did not escape the girl. “Still, I don’t go there so often now. The Range is lonesome when you are away.”
Miss Torrance accepted the speech as one made by a comrade, and perhaps was wrong, but a tramp of feet attracted her attention then, and she looked away from her companion. Driven by the railroad officials, and led by an interpreter, a band of Teutons some five or six hundred strong filed into the station. Stalwart and stolid, tow-haired, with the stamp of acquiescent patience in their homely faces, they came on with the swing, but none of the usual spirit, of drilled men. They asked no questions, but went where they were led, and the foulness of the close-packed steerage seemed to cling about them. For a time the depot rang to the rhythmic tramp of feet, and when, at a sign from the interpreter, it stopped, two bewildered children, frowsy and unwashed, in greasy homespun, sat down and gazed at Miss Torrance with mild blue eyes. She signed to a boy who was passing with a basket slung before him, and made a little impatient gesture when the man slipped his hand into his pocket.
“No,” she said; “you’ll make me vexed with you. Tell him to give them all he has. They’ll be a long while in the cars.”
She handed the boy a silver coin, and while the children sat still, undemonstratively astonished, with the golden fruit about them, the man passed him a bill.
“Now get some more oranges, and begin right at the top of the line,” he said. “If that doesn’t see you through, come back to me for another bill.”
Hetty Torrance’s eyes softened. “Larry,” she said, “that was dreadfully good of you. Where are they all going to?”
“Chicago, Nebraska, Minnesota, Montana,” said the man. “There are the cars coming in. Just out of Castle Garden, and it’s because of the city improvements disorganizing traffic they’re bringing them this way. They’re the advance guard, you see, and there are more of them coming.”
The tramp of feet commenced again, but this time it was a horde of diverse nationality, Englishmen, Irishmen, Poles, and Finns, but all with the stamp of toil, and many with that of scarcity upon them. Bedraggled, unkempt, dejected, eager with the cunning that comes of adversity, they flowed in, and Hetty Torrance’s face grew pitiful as she watched them.
“Do they come every week like this and, even in our big country, have we got room for all of them?” she said.
There was a curious gleam in the man’s brown eyes. “Oh, yes,” he said. “It’s the biggest and greatest country this old world has ever seen, and the Lord made it as a home for the poor—the folks they’ve no food or use for back yonder; and, while there are short-sighted fools who would close the door, we take them in, outcast and hopeless, and put new heart in them. In a few short years we make them men and useful citizens, the equal of any on this earth—Americans!”
Hetty Torrance nodded, and there was pride but no amusement in her smile; for she had a quick enthusiasm, and the reticence of Insular Britain has no great place in that country.
“Still,” she said; “all these people coming in must make a difference.”
The man’s face grew grave. “Yes,” he said; “there will have to be a change, and it is coming. We are only outwardly democratic just now, and don’t seem to know that men are worth more than millionaires. We have let them get their grip on our industries, and too much of our land, until what would feed a thousand buys canvas-backs, and wines from Europe for one. Isn’t what we raise in California good enough for Americans?”
Miss Torrance’s eyes twinkled. “Some of it isn’t very nice, and they don’t live on canvas-backs,” she said. “Still, it seems to me that other men have talked like that quite a thousand years ago; and, while I don’t know anyone better at breaking a broncho or cutting out a steer, straightening these affairs out is too big a contract for you.”
The man laughed pleasantly. “That’s all right, but I can do a little in the place I belong to, and the change is beginning there. Is it good for this country that one man should get rich feeding his cattle on leagues of prairie where a hundred families could make a living growing wheat?”
“Now,” said the girl drily, “I know why you and my father haven’t got on. Your opinions wouldn’t please him, Larry.”
“No,” said the man, with a trace of embarrassment, “I don’t think they would; and that’s just why we’ve got to convince him and the others that what we want to do is for the good of the country.”
Hetty Torrance laughed. “It’s going to be hard. No man wants to believe anything is good when he sees it will take quite a pile of dollars out of his pocket.”
The man said nothing, and Hetty fancied he was not desirous of following up the topic, while as they sat silent a big locomotive backed another great train of emigrant cars in. Then the tramp of feet commenced again, and once more a frowsy host of outcasts from the overcrowded lands poured into the depot. Wagons piled with baggage had preceded them, but many dragged their pitiful belongings along with them, and the murmur of their alien voices rang through the bustle of the station. Hetty Torrance was not unduly fanciful, but those footsteps caused her, as she afterwards remembered, a vague concern. She believed, as her father did, that America was made for the Americans; but it was evident that in a few more years every unit of those incoming legions would be a citizen of the Republic, with rights equal to those enjoyed by Torrance of Cedar Range. She had seen that as yet the constitution gave no man more than he could by his own hand obtain; but it seemed not unlikely that some, at least, of those dejected, unkempt men had struck for the rights of humanity that were denied them in the older lands with dynamite and rifle.
Then, as the first long train of grimy cars rolled out close packed with their frowsy human freight, a train of another kind came in, and two young women in light dresses swung themselves down from the platform of a car that was sumptuous with polished woods and gilding. Miss Torrance rose as she saw them, and touched her companion.
“Come along, Larry, and I’ll show you two of the nicest girls you ever met,” she said.
The man laughed. “They would have been nicer if they hadn’t come quite so soon,” he said.
He followed his companion