Connor shrugged his shoulders, but Townsend no longer took offense at the taciturnity of his companion; he spoke now in a lower confiding voice which indicated an admission of equality. "You're right. They said she was good, and she was good! I seen her run; I saddled her up and rode her thirty miles through sand that would of broke the heart of anything but a Steeldust, and she come through without battin' an eye. But when I got her up here she didn't do no good. But"--he reverted suddenly to his original surprise--"how'd you know her? Recognize the brand, maybe?" "By her trot," said the other, and he looked across the hills. They had turned an angle of the gulch, and on a shelf of level ground, dishing out from the side of the mountain, stretched the town. "Isn't it rather odd," said Connor, "for people to build a town over here when they could have it on the railroad?" "Maybe it looks queer to some," nodded Townsend. He closed his lips firmly, determined to imitate the terseness of his guest; but when he observed with a side-glance that Connor would not press the inquiry, talk suddenly overflowed. Indeed, Townsend was a running well of good nature, continually washing all bad temper over the brim. "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_