THE GRAFTERS

BY
FRANCIS LYNDE

ILLUSTRATED BY
ARTHUR I. KELLER

TO MY GOOD FRIEND
MR. EDWARD YOUNG CHAPIN

CONTENTS

1. ASHES OF EMPIRE
   
   
2. A MAN OF THE PEOPLE
   
   
3. THE BOSTONIANS
   
   
4. THE FLESH-POTS OF EGYPT
   
   
5. JOURNEYS END—
   
   
6. OF THE MAKING OF LAWS
   
   
7. THE SENTIMENTALISTS
   
   
8. THE HAYMAKERS
   
   
9. THE SHOCKING OF HUNNICOTT
   
   
10. WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY
    
    
11. THE LAST DITCH
    
    
12. THE MAN IN POSSESSION
    
    
13. THE WRECKERS
    
    
14. THE GERRYMANDER
    
    
15. THE JUNKETERS
    
    
16. SHARPENING THE SWORD
    
    
17. THE CONSPIRATORS
    
    
18. DOWN, BRUNO!
    
    
19. DEEP-SEA SOUNDINGS
    
    
20. THE WINNING LOSER
    
    
21. A WOMAN INTERVENES
    
    
22. A BORROWED CONSCIENCE
    
    
23. THE INSURRECTIONARIES
    
    
24. INTO THE PRIMITIVE
    
    
25. DEAD WATER AND QUICK
    
    
26. ON THE HIGH PLAINS
    
    
27. BY ORDER OF THE COURT
    
    
28. THE NIGHT OF ALARMS
    
    
29. THE RELENTLESS WHEELS
    
    
30. SUBHI SADIK

ILLUSTRATIONS

"DO YOU BEGIN TO SUSPECT THINGS?" SHE ASKED.

HE JAMMED THE FIRE END OF HIS CIGAR
AMONG THE FINGERS OF THE GRASPING HAND.

THE GRAFTERS

I

ASHES OF EMPIRE

In point of age, Gaston the strenuous was still no more than a lusty infant among the cities of the brown plain when the boom broke and the junto was born, though its beginnings as a halt camp ran back to the days of the later Mormon migrations across the thirsty plain; to that day when the advanced guard of Zophar Smith's ox-train dug wells in the damp sands of Dry Creek and called them the Waters of Merom.

Later, one Jethro Simsby, a Mormon deserter, set up his rod and staff on the banks of the creek, home-steaded a quarter-section of the sage-brush plain, and in due time came to be known as the Dry Creek cattle king. And the cow-camp was still Simsby's when the locating engineers of the Western Pacific, searching for tank stations in a land where water was scarce and hard to come by, drove their stakes along the north line of the quarter-section; and having named their last station Alphonse, christened this one Gaston.

From the stake-driving of the engineers to the spike-driving of the track-layers was a full decade. For hard times overtook the Western Pacific at Midland City, eighty miles to the eastward; while the State capital, two days' bronco-jolting west of Dry Creek, had railroad outlets in plenty and no inducements to offer a new-comer.

But, with the breaking of the cloud of financial depression, the Western Pacific succeeded in placing its extension bonds, and a little later the earth began to fly on the grade of the new line to the west. Within a Sundayless month the electric lights of the night shift could be seen, and, when the wind was right, the shriek of the locomotive whistle