Summary
Billy Milford, an Ivy-crowned easterner with a silver spoon tarnished by whiskey, drifts into the ochre dust of Addertown and briefly becomes the railroad’s golden boy before booze brands him expendable. Across the depot planks strides Gunhild, a fjord-bred Valkyrie in calico, expecting refuge with the town’s ale-soaked chieftain Jan Hagsberg. Sparks arc between erudition and innocence, but shame sends Milford into the sagebrush alongside Jim Dorsey, a human bruise in a ten-gallon hat, to ambush the company paymaster. Gold clinks beneath floorboards, then evaporates when Dorsey slithers back to snatch it, leaving Milford shackled by suspicion yet unconvicted. Gunhild’s unshaken faith propels him eastward to scour his name. Seasons pivot: she, now genteel companion to an industrial dowager, summers beside the very farm Milford has quietly resurrected. Their glances rekindle like dry lightning. Dorsey, rechristened circus strongman, stomps back, trailed by cigar smoke and menace; fists detonate, sinew triumphs over swagger, and the brute vanishes into prairie night. Flushed with honest savings, Milford confronts the railway magnate, confesses the old sin, and slaps the full restitution onto mahogany. Touched by such contrition, the magnate hands the entire cache to Gunhild as a matrimonial dowry. The couple vanish into horizon haze, pockets light but conscience luminous.
Synopsis
Billy Milford, Harvard graduate, goes west to seek his fortune. In .Addertown he secures a position as stationmaster of the L. & R. Railroad, but is forced out because of his drinking habits. He accidentally meets Gunhild, an emigrant Norwegian girl, as she arrives in Addertown to take up her home with Jan Hagsberg, the town's saloonkeeper. Seeking revenge on the railroad, Milford joins Jim Dorsey in a scheme to hold up the road's paymaster on his way to pay the employees of the company's mine. The holdup is carried out successfully and the loot hidden under the floor of Milford's cabin. Dorsey later returns and steals it. Then he flees the town. Milford is accused of the theft, but a search of his cabin does not reveal the money and he is freed. Gunhild, confident of his innocence, pledges her love as Milford goes east to live down the past. Two years later, Gunhild, employed as companion by a wealthy woman, arrives to spend the summer at a farm house adjoining the one operated by Milford. They meet by accident and their love is renewed. Dorsey, the strong man of a traveling show, reaches the town and insists upon forcing his attentions on Gunhild. Milford and Dorsey engage in a fistic encounter during which the latter is badly worsted. He leaves town that night. Having saved a large sum of money, Milford, accompanied by Gunhild, goes to the superintendent of the railroad and confesses his share in the holdup. Then he hands him the amount of money he had stolen from the paymaster. The superintendent, struck by Milford's honesty and the struggle he has made to make amends, gives the entire amount to Gunhild, now Milford's wife, as a wedding present. The two happy young persons then leave for parts unknown to begin life all over.
