Where it all happened is no matter now. Only that it was in the upland plains which lie between the mountains, somewhere in the great north-west. What is a difference of five hundred miles in a land where counties are bigger than kingdoms? When it happened matters less. The memory of man, at the best, is short, and time has swept over the record of those days of which you are to hear, as a summer shower erases the footprints of great and small alike from the dust of the highway which they have passed.
That is a broad country, the inter-mountain plains of our north-west, as it should be. Much land is needed to make stage-room for the tragedies of life. For its merriment, there is not required so much space, that being a thing which can be put into a corner, leaving the vastitude open for the fight.
It all began for Rawlins when he was forced to take a job in the stockyards at Kansas City the autumn before, after he had failed to obtain a position on one of the newspapers of that self-proclaiming city by the stinking waters of the Kaw. There was that difference between what he wanted to do and what he was obliged to take: one was a position, the other was a job.
Back of the stockyards job there had been the venture into politics. Not on Rawlins' own account, cer-
