"I'll show you how it was," he went on. "You see that shoulder of the mountain away off up there? If the light was clearer you'd be able to make out some old shacks up there, half standin' up and half fallin' down. That's where Lukin used to be. Well, the railroad come along and says: 'We're goin' to run a spur into the valley, here. You move down and build your town at the end of the track and we'll give you a hand bringing up new timber for the houses.' That's the way with railroads; they want to dictate; they're too used to handlin' folks back East that'll let capital walk right over their backs."
Here Townsend sent a glance at Connor to see if he stirred under the spur, but there was no sign of irritation.
"Out here we're different; nobody can't step in here and run us unless he's asked. See? We said, you build the railroad halfway and we'll come the other half, but we won't come clear down into the valley."
"Why?" asked Connor. "Isn't Lukin Junction a good place for a village?"
"Fine. None better. But it's the principle of the thing, you see? Them railroad magnates says to us: 'Come all the way.' 'Go to the devil,' says we. And so we come halfway to the new railroad and built our town; it'd be a pile more agreeable to have Lukin over where the railroad ends—look at the way I have to drive back and forth for my trade? But just the same, we showed that railroad that it couldn't talk us down."
He struck his horses savagely with the lines; they sprang from the jog-trot into a canter, and the buckboard went bumping down the main street of Lukin.
CHAPTER TWO
Ben Connor sat in his room overlooking the crossing of the streets. It was by no means the ramshackle huddle of lean-to's that he had expected, for Lukin was built to withstand a siege of January snows and storm-winds which were scooped by the mountains into a funnel that focused straight on the village. Besides, Lukin was no accidental, crossroads town, but the bank, store, and amusement center of a big country. The timber was being swept from the Black Mountain; there were fairly prosperous mines in the vicinity; and cattlemen were ranging their cows over the plateaus more and more during the spring and summer. Therefore, Lukin boasted two parallel main streets, and a cross street, looking forward to the day when it should be incorporated and have a mayor of its own. At present it had a moving-picture house and a dance hall where a hundred and fifty couples could take the floor at once; above all, it had Jack Townsend's hotel. This was a stout, timber building of two stories, the lower portion of which was occupied by the restaurant, the drug store, the former saloon now transformed into an ice-cream parlor, and other public places.
It was dark, but the night winds had not yet commenced, and Lukin sweltered with a heat more unbearable than full noon.