in rather sheepish silence. The strain lasted for perhaps half an h

ire. "Jupiter!" and there was another outburst of hilarity. "Sittin' Crow!" and more guffaws. "To-night we'll b

, and joyously I walloped Jake on something solid beneath his slouc

of some big responsibility. "It's all in a life-time. Giddap, you piebald flyin' ants!" and Jake

tinel-box of the vanguard of settlement. Once we were intercepted by another team and democrat, much like our own, which cut across our trail. The driver asked if we could spare any water. We ga

down at our wheels, or glanced about to see if someone were approaching. But the volume of sound grew as Jake developed his theme, and presently there was no doubt that he was singing. We soon discov

r hand in mine,

me-e. Giddap, you danged buckskin, fallin'

iner, a fo

aughter, C

of the day they seemed more than half asleep, but he saw things long before they hove into our vision, and, I have no doubt, he saw many thi

ot at that coyote

Jack, looking hurried

a section of the horizo

e him," Jac

eckon; there's a tuft of grass in front of him; he

in a loud whisper, and began to get out o

un the moment you get o

. "She's loaded," he said, with a gr

ired, and a whiff of dust puffed up three hundred yards away. The coyote, however, had taken notice; perhaps the bullet didn't pass so far above h

s comment as he laid the ri

ed up again. "How about yo

ct behind a little whitish willow bush, appropriately called the wolf willow. Even then I could s

u're a real shot." I felt I owed him tha

is shoulder, craned his neck down along the stock, steadied the barrel an instant, and fired. The coyote leaped in the air, fell on his back

part would have been superfluous, a fact which no doubt our driver understood. But his thought

th, "an' I reckon there will be some day, the ch

is head and his brown, tangled hair tufted out about the ears; most of all, his pudgy feet, which would not reach the floor of the wagon box-surely here was as unmilitary looking an individual as one could picture. And yet, his amazing ke

le water on the prairies, even at the first of May. Next day we drove all d

can't see it to-night. Have a good slee

t would tally with Jake's. On the road he had tried to explain to us the system of survey, and we had a gene

ter, 'cept fer the road allowance, is the south-east quarter of Twenty-two, which is open. Now these two quarters, north-west Fourteen an' south-east Twenty-two, is as good as any land that lays out o' doors, an' better than most. There's a bit of a gully here-you'll see it in a minute-runs down from the north-east an' cuts off

to a railroad

iles, straight as the crow flies, when it ain

xclaimed. "Pretty well in

that's about a sensible distance apart. An' here you are, in the middle of the right-of-way, an' may be cuttin' your homestead into town lots; ten lots to an acre an' two hundred dollars a lot. Can you beat it? The Lord sure has been good to you, fer no special

e to be offended at him. Had we resented his remark he would have laughed our

s as Jake claimed for the sections he had recommended. However, we found him very fixed in his preference for Fourteen and Twenty-two, and finally we accepted his arguments, and set out to make

taste of snow, but there was also the harder,

llars on any man's farm," Jake declared. "An' c

nd poplars. "Fence posts and fire wood," said Jake, "an' on railroad land too, that won't be sold fer yea

s. None of it was tall enough to reach out of the little valley and show a green tip to the bald surface of the

her end of the wooded space we found a little pond opening out, and a score of wild ducks drowsing placidly on its smooth surface. The bright co

tin' to kill somethin'. He don' care if his farm is all sand or wallows, 's long as there's somethin' to shoot, the Englishman don't. But fer a Yank

at length. "I reckon us Canadjuns is

half Englishman and half Yankee," I

enjoyin' an argyment with a Yankee he's all English, an' when h

sixty pound

might have been interpreted as a belligerent attitude. He ended it by

business," he said. "Explain this soil.

n the ground. Look what his nibs has kicked out. Fine, loamy, sandy soil, not too light an' not too sticky, all the way down. That goes plumb to Kingdom Come

a floor, one could have seen a jack-rabbit jump anywhere within a mile. The little gully was quite lost in the vista; you would not dream of its existence

l an' Whoop-up. When you take the gold out o' a mine you ain't got nothin' left, but you can take gold out o' this mine next year, a

n the two quarters, to comply with the law about sleeping on the land claimed. "But you can build one stable in the gully fer the

knew, were necessary to prevent the wholesale blanketing of th

ake, and we spent the afternoon driving about and making fresh locations. Much of the land was already taken

en away free, but which had to be bought. "They are an obstacle to close settlement," he said

sture an' hay land, fer instance. An' in a few years, when you have had some good crops an' caug

level, on opposite sides of the gully, in full view of each other, and about a hundred yards apart. The stable would be in the gully, close t

had swung far out into the universe; we had drunk of the air of God's new creation; we had been strangely conscious of the company of our souls. We arranged with Jake to meet him in the morning, when he would go with us to the land office while we registered our claims, and at the hotel we found a note from the girls giving us their new address. We located them witho

wo in the township where we had decided to locate were still open, and we

damage?" J

times seven is forty-nine; fifty dollars fer locatin' makes ninety-nine; I

Jack. "Isn't t

o out there with you? Whad'ye expec' fer your money? But I was forgettin' abou

ll make it the even hundred," he said. "Come out and see us whe

be along," said Jake. "I'

ge feeling of cutting ourselves adrift. We had not kn