VII. Debauching a Legislature 196 VIII. Danvers' Discouragement 211 IX. A Frontier Knock 219 X. Wheels Within Wheels 226 XI. The Chinese Legend 241 XII. Recognition 251 XIII. The Lobbyist 257 XIV. The Keystone 268 XV. An Unpremeditated Speech 281 XVI. The Election 291 [Illustration] BOOK I _THE RIVER_ _"I beheld the westward marches Of the ... nations, Restless, struggling, toiling, striving."_ --_Longfellow_ [Illustration] Chapter I Twisting the Lion's Tail Philip Danvers, heading a small party of horsemen, galloped around the corner of a warehouse and pulled up on the levee at Bismarck as the mate of the _Far West_ bellowed, "Let 'er go!" "Hold on!" he shouted, leaping from his mount. "Why in blazes!" The mate's impatience flared luridly as he ordered the gang-plank replaced. His heat ignited the smouldering resentment of the passengers, and they, too, exploded. "We're loaded to the guards now!" yelled one. "Yeh can't come aboard!" threatened another. "Haven't yeh got a full passenger list a'ready, Captain?" demanded a blustering, heavy-set man with beetling eyebrows, as he pushed himself angrily through the crowding men to the deck-rail. "Can't help it if I have, Burroughs," retorted the autocrat of the river-boat. "These troopers are recruits for the North West Mounted Police----" "The hell yeh say!" Philip Danvers noted the unfriendly eye, and realized that this burly fellow dominated even the captain. "Their passage was engaged three months ago," went on the officer. "It's nothing to me," affirmed Burroughs, reddening in his effort to regain his surface amenity. The young trooper, superintending the loading of the horses, resented the manifest unfriendliness toward the English recruits. A dreary rain added discomfort, and the passengers growled at the slow progress hitherto made against the spring floods of the turbulent Missouri and this prolonged delay at Bismarck. As he went up the gang-plank and walked along the deck, bits of conversation came to him. "He looks like an officer," said one, with a jerk of his thumb in his direction. "An officer! Where? D'yeh mean the dark-haired one?" The voice was that of Burroughs again, and as Danvers met his insolent eye an instant antagonism flashed between the roughly dressed frontiersman and the lean-flanked, broad-shouldered English youth. "Hello! 'F there ain't Toe String Joe!" continued Burroughs, recognizing the last to come on board, as the line was cast off and the steamer backed into the stream. "What you doin' here, Joe?"