Part 3 (2/2)

”We'll take your offer, Mr. ----” Jack commenced.

”Jake,” he interrupted. ”No mister.”

”All right, Jake, we'll take your offer. When do we start, what do we take, and where do we go?”

Jake looked interrogatively at the morning sun. Then, ”Had breakfast?”

he demanded.

”No.”

”Well, fill up. You must be feelin' pretty well bored out after your trip. I'll start get the outfit together. I got a team of buckskins that's tougher than Little Eva in an Uncle Tom's Cabin show, an' a democrat bone-shaker that scuds across the prairie like the shadow of a cloud.” (He had his poetic turns, had Jake). ”I got a tent, but you'll need your own blankets. After breakfast we'll go over to a store an' buy a lay-out o' grub.”

”How long will we be away?”

”Well, nat'rally we have to figger on driving out a good spell. Ain't no free land nowhere close to a city, a C-I-T-Y”--he spelled it out, with a whimisical mixture of pride and ridicule--”like this. Now I've a spot in my mind I think'll suit you boys right down the calf of the leg. It'll take us about three days to go, an' a day to look it over, an' three days to come back, which knocks the h.e.l.l out o' a week, don't it? An' it might be longer.”

”You see, we have our sisters here. We have to give them some idea----”

”Sisters!” Jake exclaimed, evidently in some panic. ”They ain't goin'

along?”

”No. They'll stay here until we get settled.”

”That's all right, then,” said Jake, visibly relieved. ”Well, you tell 'em a week or ten days.”

We related the morning's transactions to the girls, who accepted the situation with resignation, as it had been agreed that they would stay in Regina while we did our prospecting. They would at once set about to find cheaper lodgings, or a couple of rooms where they could keep house; they insisted that they were quite able to s.h.i.+ft for themselves. They would leave word of their new location at the hotel.

The forenoon was well gone by the time we had finished our arrangements and bought our ”grub”, which consisted mainly of canned goods and other preparations that would not spoil in the heat. The democrat was a two-seated affair, and the tent and supplies were bundled on behind, or laid in the bottom. We noted that Jake added a rifle to the equipment.

Then we started off, Jack in the front seat with the driver, and I alone behind.

For most of that day we drove through a country of almost absolutely level prairie, save for occasional rough spots which Jake described as ”buffalo wallows”, which threatened to throw us out of the ”bone-shaker”, as the buckskins never changed their pace, evidently still supposing that the democrat was following them like the shadow of a cloud. Jake told us that the buffalo wallows were once wet spots on the prairie where the buffalo came to roll in the mud, which had afterwards been baked hard by the sun. We did not know whether to accept this at face value, as it was not easy to tell when Jake was to be taken at par, but we agreed that that was a satisfactory explanation, and did not enter into a discussion. Through this country there were many evidences of prosperity and of the fertility of the soil, but Jake a.s.sured us that there was nothing to be had here, and in any case it was not to be compared with what we would find further on. The Westerner has a faith, which amounts almost to a religion, that there is always something better farther on.

During the day we discovered, also, that our guide was something of a philosopher. He had many shrewd remarks to make about immigrants, and homesteaders, and the business of settling up a country. It appeared that he had no very regular scale for his services. This came out in his account of the location of a young Englishman whom he described as Mr.

Spoof.

”He had a carload of baggage,” said Jake, with Western extravagance of language, ”and when I suggested that he start up a second-hand clothing store he said, 'Ah, I'm afraid you're spoofin' me.' So I named him Mr.

Spoof, an' he gets mail now addressed that way.”

It seemed that Mr. Spoof had been inquiring in one of the hotels where he could cash a draft for sixty pounds when Jake took him in tow. ”I knew that was no place for him--an' sixty pounds,” said Jake, ”so I hustled him out an' planted him on as slick a piece of farm land as ever grew a gopher. 'How much is your fee?' said he, very courtly, when it was all fixed up.

”'Sixty pounds,' says I, knowin' in advance the size of his wad.

”'My word!' says he. 'Isn't that a bit thick?'

”'Thick nothin'!' says I. 'Here I gets you a hundred an' sixty acres of land, as good as lies out doors, an' a chance to be a farmer, an' have your own stock an' herds an' house an' barn an' a wife an' a half-a-dozen kids--whad'ye expect for sixty pounds?'

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