Part 12 (1/2)

The little party rushed to embrace the young adventurer, and, in their first flush of surprise, n.o.body remembered to be severe with him for his carelessness. Quite the hero of the hour, the lad sat on the table and told them his tale, how he had lost his way, and how hospitably and well he had been cared for at Fuller's.

”Fuller's!” exclaimed his uncle. ”What in the world took you so far off your track as Fuller's? You must have gone at least ten miles out of your way.”

”Yes, Uncle Charlie,” said the boy, ”it's just as easy to travel ten miles out of the way as it is to go one. All you have to do is to get your face in the wrong way, and all the rest is easy. Just keep a-going; that's what I did. I turned to the right instead of to the left, and for once I found that the right was wrong.”

A burst of laughter from Oscar, who had been opening the sack that held Sandy's purchases, interrupted the story.

”Just see what a hodgepodge of a mess Sandy has brought home! Tobacco, biscuits, ginger, and I don't know what not, all in a pudding. It only lacks milk and eggs to make it a cracker pudding flavored with ginger and smoking-tobacco!” And everybody joined in the laugh that a glance at Sandy's load called forth.

”Yes,” said the blus.h.i.+ng boy; ”I forgot to tie the bag at both ends, and the jouncing up and down of Younkins's old horse (dear me! wasn't he a hard trotter!) must have made a mash of everything in the bag.

The paper of tobacco burst, and then I suppose the ginger followed; the jolting of poor old 'Dobbin' did the rest. Ruined, daddy? Nothing worth saving?”

Mr. Howell ruefully acknowledged that the mixture was not good to eat, nor yet to smoke, and certainly not to make gingerbread of. So, after picking out some of the larger pieces of the biscuits, the rest was thrown away, greatly to Sandy's mortification.

”All of my journey gone for nothing,” he said, with a sigh.

”Never mind, my boy,” said his father, fondly; ”since you have come back alive and well, let the rest of the business care for itself. As long as you are alive, and the redskins have not captured you, I am satisfied.”

Such was Sandy's welcome home.

With the following Monday morning came hard work,--harder work, so Sandy thought, than miserably trying to find one's way in the darkness of a strange region of country. For another log-house, this time on the prairie claim, was to be begun at once. They might be called on at any time to give up the cabin in which they were simply tenants at will, and it was necessary that a house of some sort be put on the claim that they had staked out and planted. The corn was up and doing well. Sun and rain had contributed to hasten on the corn-field, and the vines of the melons were vigorously pus.h.i.+ng their way up and down the hills of grain. Charlie wondered what they would do with so many watermelons when they ripened; there would be hundreds of them; and the mouths that were to eat them, although now watering for the delicious fruit, were not numerous enough to make away with a hundredth part of what would be ripe very soon. There was no market nearer than the post, and there were many melon-patches between Whittier's and the fort.

But the new log-house, taken hold of with energy, was soon built up to the height where the roof was to be put on. At this juncture, Younkins advised them to roof over the cabin slightly, make a corn-bin of it, and wait for developments. For, he argued, if there should be any rush of emigrants and settlers to that part of the country, so that their claims were in danger of dispute, they would have ample warning, and could make ready for an immediate occupation of the place. If n.o.body came, then the corn-house, or bin, would be all they wanted of the structure.

But Mr. Howell, who took the lead in all such matters, shook his head doubtfully. He was not in favor of evading the land laws; he was more afraid of the claim being jumped. If they were to come home from a hunting trip, some time, and find their log-cabin occupied by a ”claim-jumper,” or ”squatter,” as these interlopers are called, and their farm in the possession of strangers, wouldn't they feel cheap?

He thought so.

”Say, Uncle Aleck,” said Oscar, ”why not finish it off as a cabin to live in, put in the corn when it ripens, and then we shall have the concern as a dwelling, in case there is any danger of the claim being jumped?”

”Great head, Oscar,” said his uncle, admiringly. ”That is the best notion yet. We will complete the cabin just as if we were to move into it, and if anybody who looks like an intended claim-jumper comes prowling around, we will take the alarm and move in. But so far, I'm sure, there's been no rush to these parts. It's past planting season, and it is not likely that anybody will get up this way, now so far west, without our knowing it.”

So the log-cabin, or, as they called it, ”Whittier, Number Two,” was finished with all that the land laws required, with a window filled with panes of gla.s.s, a door, and a ”stick chimney” built of sticks plastered with clay, a floor and s.p.a.ce enough on the ground to take care of a family twice as large as theirs, in case of need. When all was done, they felt that they were now able to hold their farming claim as well as their timber claim, for on each was a goodly log-house, fit to live in and comfortable for the coming winter if they should make up their minds to live in the two cabins during that trying season.

The boys took great satisfaction in their kitchen-garden near the house in which they were tenants; for when Younkins lived there, he had ploughed and spaded the patch, and planted it two seasons, so now it was an old piece of ground compared with the wild land that had just been broken up around it. In their garden-spot they had planted a variety of vegetables for the table, and in the glorious Kansas suns.h.i.+ne, watered by frequent showers, they were thriving wonderfully.

They promised themselves much pleasure and profit from a garden that they would make by their new cabin, when another summer should come.

”Younkins says that he can walk all over his melon-patch on the other side of the Fork, stepping only on the melons and never touching the ground once,” said Oscar, one day, later in the season, as they were feasting themselves on one of the delicious watermelons that now so plentifully dotted their own corn-field.

”What a big story!” exclaimed both of the other boys at once. But Oscar appealed to his father, who came striding by the edge of the field where they chatted together. Had he ever heard of such a thing?

”Well,” said Mr. Bryant, good-naturedly, ”I have heard of melons so thick in a patch, and so big around, that the suns.h.i.+ne couldn't get to the ground except at high noon. How is that for a tall story?”

The boys protested that that was only a tale of fancy. Could it be possible that anybody could raise melons so thickly together as Mr.

Younkins had said he had seen them? Mr. Bryant, having kicked open a fine melon, took out the heart of it to refresh himself with, as was the manner of the settlers, where the fruit was so plenty and the market so far out of reach; then, between long drafts of the delicious pulp, he explained that certain things, melons for example, flourished better on the virgin soil of the sod than elsewhere.

”Another year or so,” he said, ”and you will never see on this patch of land such melons as these. They will never do so well again on this soil as this year. I never saw such big melons as these, and if we had planted them a little nearer together, I don't in the least doubt that any smart boy, like Sandy here, could walk all over the field stepping from one melon to another, if he only had a pole to balance himself with as he walked. There would be nothing very 'wonderful-like' about that. It's a pity that we have no use for these, there are so many of them and they are so good. Pity some of the folks at home haven't a few of them--a hundred or two, for instance.”

It did seem a great waste of good things that these hundreds and hundreds of great watermelons should decay on the ground for lack of somebody to eat them. In the very wantonness of their plenty the settlers had been accustomed to break open two or three of the finest of the fruit before they could satisfy themselves that they had got one of the best. Even then they only took the choicest parts, leaving the rest to the birds. By night, too, the coyotes, or prairie-wolves, mean and sneaking things that they were, would steal down into the melon-patch, and, in the desperation of their hunger, nose into the broken melons left by the settlers, and attempt to drag away some of the fragments, all the time uttering their fiendish yelps and howls.

Somebody had told the boys that the juice of watermelons boiled to a thick syrup was a very good subst.i.tute for mola.s.ses. Younkins told them that, back in old Missouri, ”many families never had any other kind of sweetenin' in the house than watermelon mola.s.ses.” So Charlie made an experiment with the juice boiled until it was pretty thick.