"Well, see that you don't. You hit it close when you said that love
an' law don't go together. Don't try to study 'em both at the same
time; that's my advice, an' I don't charge you anything for it, seeing
it's you." With a grin at his little jest, Judge Bradley turned back
to his desk and to his little world.




CHAPTER VII

THE NEW WORLD

Franklin crossed the Missouri River, that dividing stream known to a
generation of Western men simply as "the River," and acknowledged as the
boundary between the old and the new, the known and the untried. He
passed on through well-settled farming regions, dotted with prosperous
towns. He moved still with the rolling wheels over a country which
showed only here and there the smoke of a rancher's home. Not even yet
did the daring flight of the railway cease. It came into a land wide,
unbounded, apparently untracked by man, and seemingly set beyond the
limit of man's wanderings. Far out in the heart of this great gray
wilderness lay the track-end of this railroad pushing across the
continent. When Franklin descended from the rude train he needed no one
to tell him he had come to Ellisville. He was at the limit, the edge,
the boundary! "Well, friend," said the fireman, who was oiling the
engine as he passed, and who grinned amiably as he spoke, "you're sure at
the front now."