"Say, isn't there a village?" he inquired. "Buffalo Point?"
The girl shook her head.
"No. Just that little frame house of ours. Father had it built as—a sort of office. You see, we're both working hard on his land scheme. You see, it's—it's our hobby, the same as losing trails is yours."
Gordon laughed.
"That's plumb spoiled my day. I'd forgotten the land business. Now it's all come over me like a chill, like the drip of an ice wagon down the back of my neck. I s'pose there'll always be land around, and we've always got to have coal. It seems a pity, doesn't it. Say, there hasn't been a soul I've met in twenty-four hours, but they've been crazy on—on town sites. They're most ridiculous things, town sites. Four pegs and four imaginary lines, a deal of grass with a substrata of crawly things. And for that men would scrap, and cheat, and rob, and—and graft. It's—a wonder."
Hazel Mallinsbee checked her inclination to laugh again. Her eyes were gazing ahead at the little frame house, and they grew wistfully serious.
"It isn't the land," she said simply. "The scrap, and cheat, and rob, and graft, are right. But it's the fight for fortune. Fortune?" she smiled. "Fortune means everything to a modern man. To some women, too, but not quite in the way it does to a man. You see, in olden days competition took a different form. I don't know if, in spite of what folks say about the savagery of old times, they weren't more honest and wholesome than they are now. However, nature's got to compete for something. Human nature's got to beat someone. Life is just one incessant rivalry. Well, in old times it took the form of bloodshed and war, when men counted with pride the tally of their victories. Now we point with pride to our civilization, and gaze back in pity upon our benighted forefathers. Instead of bloodshed, killing, fighting, massacring and all the old bad habits of those who came before us, we point our civilization by lying, cheating, robbing and grafting."
Gordon smiled.
"Put that way it sounds as though the old folks were first-class saints compared with us. There's a deal of honesty when two fellers get right up on their hind legs and start in to mush each other's faces to a pulp. But it isn't just the same when you creep up while the other feller isn't wise and push the muzzle of a gun into his middle and riddle his stomach till it's like a piece of gruyère cheese."
Hazel shook her head. Her eyes were still smiling, but Gordon detected something of the serious thought behind them. He vainly endeavored to sober his mood in sympathy.