A Girl of the Timber Claims

Summary

Across the rain-lashed cedar ridges of a nameless Northwest territory, Jess Vance—sun-browned, rifle-cradling, and fiercely self-possessed—guards a stump-dotted quarter-section that her widowed father wrested from the glacial till. Their log shanty, chinked with moss and hope, stands in the cross-hairs of Senator Hoyle’s paper empire: a slick consortium that counterfeits residence logs, forges boundary stones, and ghosts whole townships into the pockets of city speculators. Enter Francis Ames, a federal solicitor dispatched under seal to audit the fraud; he is urbane, velvet-gloved, and armed with a warrant no one in the territory has yet dared to honor. Hoyle’s machine—part smoke-filled courtrooms, part brass-knuckled backwoods scouts—throttles every attempt by homesteaders to parley with the investigator; rumor brands Ames a turncoat before his boots ever kiss pine needles. Jess, stung by the betrayal she cannot yet name, swears to perforate the first “dummy settler” who plants a sham cabin on her skyline. Fate’s jest: the interloper who materializes is Ames himself, incognito, tracking the ring’s hired proxies through primordial hemlock. A trespass, a warning shot, a flesh-grazing reprimand—three days of bristling standoff compress into mythic tableau: axe versus affidavit, calico versus cravat. While Ames nurses a creased shoulder in a mossy deadfall, his urbane secretary Stanley flirts with Cora Abbott, a former lover carrying both opera-club gossip and a grudge sharp enough to slice loyalties. Cora, promised reward by Hoyle, invades the timber like a velvet plague, insisting she has come to tend “her fiancé.” Jess, her pity pricked by conscience, sneaks in to dress the wound; sparks of contrapuntal tenderness flicker against the cedar gloom. Cora, sensing rival heat, banishes Jess with a lie of engagement; bribery buys two night-riding arsonists who torch Ames’ cabin on the eve of a settler mob intent on burning the ring’s “jumpers.” Charred clothing and a half-breed’s corpse convince the valley that the government man is dead; grief hollows Jess into a pilgrim. She voyages to Portland, resolved to barter her claim for legal redress, only to collide with Ames—very alive—on a marble courthouse stair. Recognition detonates: the jumper she shot is the advocate she mourned. Deeds are signed, allegiances reversed, and the timber claim relinquishes its lone heroine to marriage, the settlement’s knots left for history’s axe to sever.

Synopsis

Jess Vance and her father are homesteaders in the Northwest. For some time land-frauds "engineered" by a "ring" controlled by Senator Hoyle have been going on. Francis Ames, a lawyer, is sent by the government to investigate. The homesteaders endeavor to see Ames, but by the manipulation of Senator Hoyle are prevented from doing so, and they feel that Ames has double-crossed them. Jess boasts bravely of what she would do if she found one of the "dummies" on her claim. Ames learns that one of Hoyle's henchmen has arranged to send dummies to the timberland to "establish a residence" and cinch the ring's claim to the township where Jess lives. Ames stating that he is going east, follows the dummies. Jess meets Ames on her claim and orders him off. He refuses to leave and at the expiration of three days Jess again orders him off, and when he still refuses she shoots him, inflicting only a slight wound. Meantime his secretary, Stanley, meets Cora Abbott, a former friend of Ames. She obtains information that Ames is laid up in his cabin and reports to Hoyle. He tells her to "get something" on Ames. She goes to the woods, and to Ames' dismay insists that she has come to nurse him back to health. In the meantime Jess, feeling sorry for him, has bandaged his wound. He learns of the contempt in which he is held by the settlers. Cora, to get rid of Jess, tells her that she and Ames are engaged. Ames asks Cora to leave, which she does, after a stormy scene, but she bribes two forest scouts to burn Ames' cabin on the night the settlers have decided to burn the cabin of the jumpers. Ames, hearing of the proposed attempt to drive out the jumpers, leaves his cabin in charge of a half-breed. When Jess is told of the burning of Ames' cabin, and the finding of a charred body, she is broken-hearted, and to forget her own heartache offers to go to Portland to see if anything can be done toward the settlement of the homesteaders' wrongs. She is granted an interview with Ames, and there are two very surprised people when Ames sees his forest girl and Jess discovers that her jumper and the despised Ames are one and the same. Later she gladly gives up her homestead rights to become Ames' bride.