After the meal was over Ensley spread a number of maps but recently issued by the Department of the Interior on the table, and enlightened Burton on the details of the regulations. “Now here,” he said, “is a fine stretch of land, of which I have first hand knowledge, as I cross it every fall when I take a few days off for goose shooting. There’s no better soil in the West. It’s about sixty miles from here, and nearly a hundred miles from a railway, but they’re building new lines through this country as fast as they can buy the labour and the steel, and you are sure to have a road near by in a few years. Now it’s a little early for goose hunting, but the ducks are at their best, and there is a chance of a few chicken. Suppose we hitch up to-morrow and make a trip out there to look over the land?”
“Oh, I couldn’t permit you to go to so much trouble, Mr.—Zeb.”
“No permission needed,” laughed the other. “It’s my buckboard and my horses, and you ride with me if you will. We leave in the morning at seven. There’s no time to lose,” he continued, consulting the contents of a large envelope, “as these lands are to be opened for entry exactly eight days from to-morrow, and you’d better be at the land office at least a couple of days ahead. I shouldn’t wonder but there’s men—and women too, maybe—lined up there waiting now, but most of them are eager to file on the land closer in. They haven’t been out that far, and they don’t know what they’re missing. Now there’ll be a ten dollar fee to pay—you have a little money?” Burton nodded. “Very well. If you’re short, say so. There’ll be some other expenses too. You’ll have to line up before the door of the land office and stay there night and day to hold your place. Caterers will bring you food if you are willing to pay for the service, and you can perhaps hire a man to stand in your place part of the time, but be sure he’s honest, or he may give it up to someone else. Then, of course, you have a little land to break each year, and certain improvements to make in the way of building a house or the like, and in three years if you can show that you have lived on the property six months in each twelve and complied with the other regulations you will receive from the Government a certificate of title to the property.”
They talked about many details in connection with homestead life, talked, indeed, long after they were in bed, while a coyote howled to his mate across the plain and a waxing moon slanted its soft light through the single square window of the shanty.
Five days later Burton walked down the street to the Land Office. At first he thought there must be a riot or disturbance of some sort in front of the buildings, but on arrival found that the crowd was genial and orderly, and arranged in single file in the form of a half circle before the building. Where the end of the half circle came back to the curb the line extended along the sidewalk. Burton walked slowly the length of the line, looking curiously into the faces of these patient waiters; men of all nationalities, Canadian, American, British Islanders, German, Russian, French, Austrian, Pole, Italian, Hungarian, Scandinavian, Chinamen—here they were gathered from the corners of the globe and waiting patiently through night and day, through heat and cold, through wind and rain, through any trial and any hazard for the God-sent privilege, born of a new country, of calling the land beneath their feet their own. There were tired faces there, faces where the cheek bones stood rugged under a tawny skin and the eyes glowed under deep foreheads—faces of men from the ballast gang and the sewer gang, from the tie camp and the grading camp—men who had sweat hard in the hot sun for the few dollars necessary to stake them to home and title of their own. Here and there a woman was seen in the line, seated on soap box or suit case, complacently knitting or engaged with her fancy work. But they were all good-natured. This human material, combustible as powder, seemed as innocent as dry sand. And Burton learned that their good nature and their complacence was due to one fact only—their confidence that whatever was done would be done in conformity with the law and with absolute fairness to all concerned. Once shake that confidence, and you have dropped the spark into what you thought was sand!
Presently he reached the end of the line, and it was not until then that he realised that he was a part of this organisation, a link in this chain which stretched resolute and immovable along the street. Strange soldiers of fortune they were; men and women who feared neither the wilderness nor the hardships of the pioneer; volunteers who marched out to the sunset to wrest an existence from the unknown. Fit sires and mothers these for the race that shall answer the questions of the next century!
Burton seated himself on the curb beside the last of the line. A Chinaman advanced with a basket of sandwiches and a pot of tea. Burton satisfied his hunger and thirst and paid the modest bill. A news-vendor sold him a magazine, and he sat down to while away the time until the doors should be opened and those at the head of the column should file in to register on the land of their choice.
The day waned and night settled in. Burton began to feel the need of a blanket, and hired a boy to buy him one at a store. A street lamp burned overhead and he bought an evening newspaper. Its touch seemed strange to his fingers—it was so long since he had handled a newspaper fresh from the press. He glanced over the black headlines, but found little of interest. What were the papers talking about, anyway? In the last two months he had fallen entirely out of touch with what is called the events of the world. In a company of well read men he would have seemed ignorant. And yet in his heart he felt that these last few weeks had brought him closer to life, closer to the real things of the world, than ever he had been before.
He turned over the inside pages idly until his eye, attracted by a familiar word, fell on a paragraph in an obscure corner. In a moment his attention was rivetted to the item, as he read:
“Plainville. The first Assize Court to be held in the town of Plainville will open on Monday. The docket will be a light one, consisting only of minor cases. The principal local interest centres about a charge against Raymond Burton of stealing $2,000 from the safe of his employer, one of the leading merchants of this place. The employer himself was so satisfied of Burton’s innocence that he went his bail, but the young man has completely disappeared, and the confiding employer seems likely to forfeit his bond. The stolen money, however, was recovered, having been found in Burton’s trunk by a detective engaged on the case.”