"Sure, he'll sell it if he sees something better."
"How much can he get for it?"
"Thirty or forty thousand dollars."
"That's more like a stake. Hiram, it's up to you and me to show him something better—and to show it to him when he's alone…You're tired to-night. Sleep it out, and we'll drive over to the ranch to-morrow together. We ought to pick something better than a homestead out of this."
CHAPTER XIII
SETTING THE TRAP
Notwithstanding the exhaustion occasioned by his journey Riles was early about. The hotel bed was strange to him, and the noises that floated up from the bar-room interrupted his slumbers. At least, he told himself it was the noises, but the fact is a great new thought had been sown in his brain, and had started the cells whirling in dizzy speculation. The unexpected meeting with Gardiner, the latter's evident prosperity, and his frank contempt for men who made their living by labour, had left a deep impression upon Riles. He had no idea by what means Gardiner proposed that they should possess themselves of Harris's money, and he felt some doubt about any such attempt being rewarded with success. Nevertheless, Gardiner seemed to think the matter a simple one enough, and Gardiner's good clothes and good cigars were evidence of his ability to carry his plans into effect.
The streets had not yet assumed their morning activity when Riles emerged from the hotel, but the unclouded Alberta sunshine was bathing every atom of out-of-doors in a warmth and brilliance that might have found, and in very truth did find, a keen response in the inanimate objects of its affection. The jubilant laugh of running mountain water rippled through the quiet air, fragrant with the perfume of balm-of-Gilead and balsam; to the eastward the sunshine poured into broad valleys of undulating, sweeping plain, and in the west the great mountains, clad in their eternal robes of white, loomed silent and impressive in their majesty. Even Riles stopped to look at them, and they stirred in him an emotion that was not altogether profane—a faint, undefined consciousness of the puniness of man and the might of his Creator. No one can live for long in the presence of the mountains without that consciousness, and it is a great day for the mountain-dweller when he learns to distinguish between the puniness of man, the animal, and the infinity of man, the thinking soul. Riles breakfasted as soon as the dining-room was opened, eating his meal hurriedly, as he always did, albeit the French-fried potatoes, to which he was unaccustomed, could be poised on his knife only with considerable effort. Then he sat down in an arm-chair on the shady side of the hotel to wait for Gardiner. He had suddenly lost his interest in the free lands which had been the purpose of his journey.
His wait was longer than he had expected, and he broke it several times by strolls about the little town. In size it was much the same as Plainville, but that was the chief point of resemblance. True, it had its typical stores, selling everything from silks to coal oil; its blacksmiths' shops, ringing with the hammer of the busy smith on ploughshare or horseshoe; its implement agencies, with rows of gaudily-painted wagons, mowers, and binders obstructing the thoroughfare, and the hempen smell of new binder twine floating from the hot recess of their iron-covered storehouses; a couple of banks, occupying the best corners, and barber shops and pool-rooms in apparent excess of the needs of the population. All these he might have found in Plainville, but there were here in addition half-a-dozen real estate offices, with a score or more curbstone dealers, locaters, commission-splitters, and go-betweens, and the number and size of the livery stables gave some clue to the amount of prospecting going on from this base of supplies. The streets were lined with traffic. Riles estimated that in two hours as many teams passed him as might be seen in Plainville in a week; long rows of box-cars were unloading on the side tracks; farmers' effects and household goods of every description were piled in great heaps about the railway yards; while horses, cattle, pigs, and poultry contributed to the dust and din of the settlers' operations. Great wagons of lumber were being loaded at the lumber yards, and an unbroken procession of wagons and farm machinery of every description was wending its way slowly into the distance where lay hope of home or fortune for the new settler.
It was almost noon when Gardiner appeared on the scene. "You don't hurt you'self in the mornin's," was Riles' greeting.