Starting next morning at sunrise, Carter ran through the settlements, fed at the mission in the valley of the Assiniboin at noon, then, climbing out, he rattled south through the arid plains which cumber the earth from the river to Beaver Creek. There Vickery, the keeper of the stopping-house, yelled to him to put in and feed. He had not seen a man for two weeks, and his wells of speech were full to overflowing. But Carter shook denial. Far off a dark smudge rose from under the edge of the world—the smoke of the express, he thought. One would have believed it within a dozen miles, yet when, an hour later, he rattled into Lone Tree, it seemed no nearer than when first it impinged on the quivering horizon. This appearance, however, was deceptive as the first, for he had scarcely unhitched at the livery before an engine and two toy cars stole out from under the smudge.
"General manager's private car," the station agent answered Carter's inquiry. "The old man lays over here to talk with a deputation. It's over at the hotel now, feeding and liquoring up."
"The old grievance?" Carter asked.
The agent nodded. "That and others. They say we're coming their flesh and blood. You should hear old man Cummings orate on that. And they accuse us of exacting forty bushels of wheat out of every hundred we tote out to the seaboard."
"Wheat at forty-five, freight to Montreal at twenty-seven?" Carter mused. "Don't that pretty near size it, Hooper?"
"Is that our fault?" the agent ruffled, like an irate gobbler. "Did we freeze their wheat? Sound grain is worth sixty-eight, and if they will farm at the north pole they must expect to get frozen."
"And if you will railroad at the north pole," Carter suggested, "you ought to—"
"Get all that's coming to us," the agent finished. "But we don't. Our line runs through fifteen hundred miles of country that don't pay for axle-grease. We must make running expenses, and ought to pay a reasonable interest to our stockholders, though we haven't yet. The settled lands have to bear hauling charges on the unsettled. But these fellows don't see our side of it. Where would they be without the line, anyway? Now answer me that, Carter."
"Back East, landless, homeless, choring for sixteen a month an' board," Carter slowly answered. "I'm not bucking your railroad, Hooper. But here's the point—your people and the government sent out all sorts of lying literature an' filled these fellows with the idea that they were going to get rich quick; whereas this is a poor man's country an' will be for a generation to come. Five generations of farmers couldn't have built this line which one generation must pay for. There's the point. They've clapped a mortgage an' a fifteen-hundred-mile handicap on their future, an' the interest is going to bear their noses hard down on the grindstone. They'll make a living, but they ain't going to have much of a time. Their children's children will reap the profit off their sweat."
"No," the agent profanely agreed, "they ain't going to have a hell of a time." Having spent his mature years in one continuous wrangle over freights and rates, it was positively disconcerting to find a farmer who could appreciate the necessities of railroad economics, and after a thoughtful pause the agent said, "You ain't so slow—for a farmer."