The Spenders | Page 2

spell was broken"
"'Why, you'd be Lady Casselthorpe, with dukes and counts takin' off
their crowns to you'"
"'Remember that saying of your pa's, "it takes all kinds of fools to make
a world"'"
"'Say it that way--" Miss Milbrey is engaged with Mr. Bines, and can't
see you"'"

THE SPENDERS
CHAPTER I.
The Second Generation is Removed
When Daniel J. Bines died of apoplexy in his private car at Kaslo
Junction no one knew just where to reach either his old father or his
young son with the news of his death. Somewhere up the eastern slope
of the Sierras the old man would be leading, as he had long chosen to
lead each summer, the lonely life of a prospector. The young man, two
years out of Harvard, and but recently back from an extended European
tour, was at some point on the North Atlantic coast, beginning the
season's pursuit of happiness as he listed.
Only in a land so young that almost the present dwellers therein have
made it might we find individualities which so decisively failed to
blend. So little congruous was the family of Bines in root, branch, and
blossom, that it might, indeed, be taken to picture an epic of Western
life as the romancer would tell it. First of the line stands the figure of
Peter Bines, the pioneer, contemporary with the stirring days of
Frémont, of Kit Carson, of Harney, and Bridger; the fearless strivers
toward an ever-receding West, fascinating for its untried dangers as for
its fabled wealth,--the sturdy, grave men who fought and toiled and

hoped, and realised in varying measure, but who led in sober truth a life
such as the colours of no taleteller shall ever be high enough to
reproduce.
Next came Daniel J. Bines, a type of the builder and organiser who
followed the trail blazed by the earlier pioneer; the genius who, finding
the magic realm opened, forthwith became its exploiter to its vast
renown and his own large profit, coining its wealth of minerals, lumber,
cattle, and grain, and adventurously building the railroads that must
always be had to drain a new land of savagery.
Nor would there be wanting a third--a figure of this present day,
containing, in potency at least, the stanch qualities of his two rugged
forbears,--the venturesome spirit that set his restless grandsire to roving
westward, the power to group and coordinate, to "think three moves
ahead" which had made his father a man of affairs; and, further, he had
something modern of his own that neither of the others possessed, and
yet which came as the just fruit of the parent vine: a disposition perhaps
a bit less strenuous, turning back to the risen rather than forward to the
setting sun; a tendency to rest a little from the toil and tumult; to
cultivate some graces subtler than those of adventure and
commercialism; to make the most of what had been done rather than
strain to the doing of needless more; to live, in short, like a philosopher
and a gentleman who has more golden dollars a year than either
philosophers or gentlemen are wont to enjoy.
And now the central figure had gone suddenly at the age of fifty-two,
after the way of certain men who are quick, ardent, and generous in
their living. From his luxurious private car, lying on the side-track at
the dreary little station, Toler, private secretary to the millionaire, had
telegraphed to the headquarters of one important railway company the
death of its president, and to various mining, milling, and lumbering
companies the death of their president, vice-president, or managing
director as the case might be. For the widow and only daughter word of
the calamity had gone to a mountain resort not far from the family
home at Montana City.
There promised to be delay in reaching the other two. The son would

early read the news, Toler decided, unless perchance he were off at sea,
since the death of a figure like Bines would be told by every daily
newspaper in the country. He telegraphed, however, to the young man's
New York apartments and to a Newport address, on the chance of
finding him.
Locating old Peter Bines at this season of the year was a feat never
lightly to be undertaken, nor for any trivial end. It being now the 10th
of June, it could be known with certainty only that in one of four States
he was prowling through some wooded canon, toiling over a windy
pass, or scaling a mountain sheerly, in his ancient and best loved sport
of prospecting. Knowing his habits, the rashest guesser would not have
attempted to say more definitely where the old man might be.
The most promising plan Toler could devise was to