Then, standing in the door of his lonely homestead, he glanced at the great shadowy granaries and barns, and clenched his hand as he saw what he could do if the things that had been forced upon him were rightfully his.  He knew his own mettle, and that he could hold them if he would, but the pale, cold face of a woman rose up in judgment against him, and he also knew that because of the love of her, that was casting its toils about him, he must give them up.

Far back on the prairie a lonely coyote howled, and a faint wind, that was now like snow-cooled wine, brought the sighing of limitless grasses out of the silence.  There was no cloud in the crystalline ether, and something in the vastness and stillness that spoke of infinity, brought a curious sense of peace to him.  Impostor though he was, he would leave Silverdale better than he found it, and afterwards it would be of no great moment what became of him.  Countless generations of toiling men had borne their petty sorrows before him, and gone back to the dust they sprang from, but still, in due succession, harvest followed seed-time, and the world whirled on.  Then, remembering that, in the meanwhile, he had much to do which would commence with the sun on the morrow, he went back into the house and shook the fancies from him.

CHAPTER XIII

MASTERY RECOGNIZED

There was, considering the latest price of wheat, a somewhat astonishing attendance in the long room of the hotel at the railroad settlement one Saturday evening.  A big stove in the midst of it diffused a stuffy and almost unnecessary heat, gaudy nickeled lamps an uncertain brilliancy, and the place was filled with the drifting smoke of indifferent tobacco.  Oleographs, barbaric in color and drawing, hung about the roughly-boarded walls, and any critical stranger would have found the saloon comfortless and tawdry.

It was, however, filled that night with bronzed-faced men who expected nothing better.  Most of them wore jackets of soft black leather or embroidered deerskin, and the jean trousers and long boots of not a few apparently stood in need of repairing, though the sprinkling of more conventional apparel and paler faces showed that the storekeepers of the settlement had been drawn together, as well as the prairie farmers who had driven in to buy provisions or take up their mail.  There was, however, but little laughter, and their voices were low, for boisterousness and assertion are not generally met with on the silent prairie.  Indeed, the attitude of some of the men was mildly deprecatory, as though they felt that in assisting in what was going forward they were doing an unusual thing.  Still, the eyes of all were turned towards the table where a man, who differed widely in appearance from most of them, dealt out the cards.