Lorimer of the Northwest   By: Harold Bindloss (1866-1945)

[Illustration: We Were in the Cañon, Shooting Down the Mad Rush of a Rapid toward Eternity. Page 170.]

LORIMER OF THE NORTHWEST

By HAROLD BINDLOSS Author of By Right of Purchase, Etc.

With Frontispiece By ALFRED JAMES DEWEY

A. L. BURT COMPANY

Publishers New York

Copyright, 1909, by

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

All rights reserved

January, 1909

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE I. The First Sowing 7 II. The Church Parade 16 III. "The Land of Promise" 25 IV. An Unpleasant Apprenticeship 35 V. A Bid for Fortune 46 VI. The First Crop 56 VII. Harvest Home 66 VIII. Held Up 77 IX. A Reckoning 91 X. A Forward Policy 105 XI. On the Railroad 117 XII. The Unexpected 128 XIII. Advocates of Temperance 138 XIV. The Hired Teamster 151 XV. Under the Shadow of Death 163 XVI. When the Waters Rose 175 XVII. The Return 184 XVIII. The Opening of the Line 195 XIX. A Generous Offer 209 XX. The Return to the Prairie 220 XXI. The Stolen Cattle 231 XXII. A Race with Time 242 XXIII. On the Gold Trail 253 XXIV. The Brink of Eternity 267 XXV. Ormond's Last Journey 280 XXVI. The Trial 291 XXVII. The Road to Dakota 305 XXVIII. The Recall of Adam Lee 316 XXIX. Concerning the Day Spring Mine 326 XXXI. The Deposed Ruler 350 XXXII. The New Ruler of Carrington 362 XXXIII. A Bountiful Harvest 375

LORIMER OF THE NORTHWEST

PROLOGUE

Fairmead, Western Canada.

It is a still, hot day in autumn, and there is a droning of mosquitoes where I sit by an open window, glancing alternately out across the Assiniboian prairie and somewhat blankly at the bundle of paper before me, ready to begin this story. Its telling will not be an easy matter, but one finds idle hours pass heavily after a life such as mine has been, and since the bronco blundering into a badger hole fell and broke my leg the surgeon who rode forty miles to set it said that if I was to work at harvest I must not move before and the harvest is already near. So I nibble the pen and look around the long match boarded hall, waiting for the inspiration which is strangely slow in coming, while my wife, who was Grace Carrington, smiles over her sewing and suggests that it is high time to begin.

There are many guns on the wall glistening like sardines with oil rubbed well in, and among them the old Winchester which once saved us from starvation in British Columbia. There are also long rows of painted butterflies and moths whose colors pleased Grace's fancy when I caught them in the sloos. Sometimes I wonder whether she really likes that kind of decoration, or merely pinned them to the wall because I caught them for her. Then, and this is my own fancy, the bit of the horse which once saved her life hangs in a place of its own under the heads of the antelopes and the forward half of a crane with which a Winnipeg taxidermist has travestied nature. There are also a few oil paintings and, of course, some furniture, but I am not learned in such matters, and know only that it cost me many dollars when I brought it from Toronto on one of Grace's birthdays, and I have never regretted the investment.