My land was paid for, such as it was; but when the people who, like me,
had drailed out across the prairies with the last year's rush, came and
asked me to join the Settlers' Club to run these intruders off, it
appeared to me that it was only a man's part in me to stand to it and
take hold and do. I felt the old urge of all landowners to stand
together against the landless, I suppose. What is title to land anyhow,
but the right of those who have it to hold on to it? No man ever made
land--except my ancestors, the Dutch, perhaps. All men do is to get
possession of it, and run everybody else off, either with clubs, guns,
or the sheriff.
I did not look forward to all the doings of the Settlers' Club, but I
joined it, and I have never been ashamed of it, even when Dick McGill
was slangwhanging me about what we did. I never knew, and I don't know
now, just what the law was, but I thought then, and I think now, that
the Settlers' Club had the right of it. I thought so the night we went
over to run the claim-jumper off Absalom Frost's land, within a week of
my joining.
It was over on Section Twenty-seven, that the claim-jumper had built a
hut about where the schoolhouse now is, with a stable in one end of it,
and a den in which to live in the other. He was a young man, with no
dependents, and we felt no compunctions of conscience, that dark night,
when two wagon-loads of us, one of which came from the direction of
Monterey Centre, drove quietly up and knocked at the door.
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