unwelcoming and crowded. He hated every one of them, he hated the new
railroad they were building, he hated their new-fangled and mysterious
machinery which puzzled him with intricate devices and appalled him with
its power of fire and steam.

By the time the afternoon was two hours old he was in a state of sullen
fury, silent, morose, miserable on the stump which he had chosen as his
vantage point for observation. More than once an engineer looked at him
with plain admiration of his mammoth stature in his eyes; many a
town-girl, seeing him, like a statue of The Pioneer upon a fitting
pedestal, made furtive eyes at him, for he was handsome and attractive
in his rough ensemble; but he paid no heed to any of them. He was giving
his mind over to consideration of his grievance against these men who
came, with steam and pick and shovel, dynamite and railroad iron,
invading his domain.

He thought about his secret still, hidden in its mountain fastness, and
realized that this new stage of settlement's inexorable march meant
danger to it; he thought about the game which roamed the hills and
realized that with the coming of the crowd it would soon scatter, never
to return; he thought about the girl up there, his companion in
adversity, his fellow sufferer from mutual wrong, the one thing which he
had had to love, the shining prize which it had been his sole ambition
to possess for life; he thought of her and then about the man, who
(product of the same advantages which made these men before him clever
with their blue-prints and their puffling monsters) had come there
searching profit from the land which he had never loved or lived on,
and, seeing Madge, had, Joe thoroughly believed, exerted every wile of a
superior experience to win her from him by fair means or foul. He
thought of them and hated all of them!