The Girl at the Halfway House: A Story of the PlainsHough, Emerson
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The Girl at the Halfway House: A Story of the Plains
Hough, Emerson
Great Plains -- Fiction; Historical fiction, American
Poor medicine as it is, work was ever the best salve known for a
hurting heart. Franklin betook him to his daily work, and he saw
success attend his labours. Already against the frank barbarity of the
cattle days there began to push the hand of the "law-and-order"
element, steadily increasing in power. Although all the primitive
savage in him answered to the summons of those white-hot days to every
virile, daring nature, Franklin none the less felt growing in his heart
the stubbornness of the man of property, the landholding man, the man
who even unconsciously plans a home, resolved to cling to that which he
has taken of the earth's surface for his own. Heredity, civilization,
that which we call common sense, won the victory. Though he saw his
own face in the primeval mirror here held up to him, Franklin turned
away. It was sure to him that he must set his influence against this
unorganized day of waste and riotousness. He knew that this perfervid
time could not endure, knew that the sweep of American civilization
must occupy all this land as it had all the lands from the Alleghenies
to the plains. He foresaw in this crude new region the scene of a
great material activity, a vast industrial development. The swift
action of the early days was to the liking of his robust nature, and
the sweep of the cattle trade, sudden and unexpected as it had been, in
no wise altered his original intention of remaining as an integer of
this community. It needed no great foresight to realize that all this
land, now so wild and cheap, could not long remain wild and cheap, but
must follow the history of values as it had been written up to the edge
of that time and place.
Of law business of an actual sort there was next to none at Ellisville,
all the transactions being in wild lands and wild cattle, but, as did
all attorneys of the time, Franklin became broker before he grew to be
professional man. Fortunate in securing the handling of the railroad
lands, he sold block after block of wild land to the pushing men who
came out to the "front" in search of farms and cattle ranches. His own
profits he invested again in land. Thus he early found himself making
much more than a livelihood, and laying the foundation of later
fortune. Long since he had "proved up" his claim and moved into town
permanently, having office and residence in the great depot hotel which
was the citadel of the forces of law and order, of progress and
civilization in that land.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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