Part 7 (2/2)

”I do now. It's Harold Brook. Besides, in this country, you don't have to know people's names. You just speak anyway.”

”Oh, do you?” I said, sarcastically. ”So I see.”

”Don't be cross,” she coaxed. ”See, I can beat you to that badger-hole.

One--two--three--”

She was off like the wind. For a moment I hesitated, then joined in the race. But she had too much start, and besides, she was almost a match for me. She reached the little mound first, and as she turned she swerved a little from her course, and I happened to plunge into her. To save herself from falling she seized me about the neck, and her hair brushed against my face. . . . . . .

We walked back slowly, arm in arm, and I had a sense of being very much of a brute. . . Jean had wound me around her little finger.

So the days and nights went by. The sun was almost setting on the eighth day, and the prairie, now gorgeous in its spring fluffery of anemones, had taken on its evening richness of green when we at length drew up close to the bank of the gully on Fourteen. For an hour or more we had been straining our eyes for a glimpse of the promised land, but as it looked exactly the same as all the other land for miles around we could not be sure of Fourteen until the gully came into view. Then we threw up our hats and rushed ahead, leaving the oxen to come as they chose. They chose not to come at all, and Buck actually lay down in the road.

There are certain thrills of accomplishment, certain epochs of development, which come only once in a life-time. One of these is when a young man writes his first cheque, or first turns his key in his own door, or first sees his name on an office signboard. But the greatest is when he first looks upon land he can call his own. True, this land was not yet ours, but it was pledged to us if we carried out our part of a very simple agreement, and already we had a proprietary interest in it.

We showed it to the girls with the pride of a mother displaying her first born. We were desperately anxious that our choice should be justified.

We waited for their verdict, but neither spoke. ”Well, what do you think of it?” Jack asked at length.

”It looks all right,” said Marjorie. ”I suppose it is as good as any.

But I don't see how you are going to tell it from other people's land.

It's all alike.”

”What do you say, Jean?”

But Jean was looking at the sunset, where the Master Artist was splas.h.i.+ng pastels of bronze and copper against a background of silver and champagne. ”Wonderful, wonderful!” she murmured.

”Fourteen is Frank's and Twenty-two is mine,” Jack explained. ”We'll pitch the tent for the girls here, and Frank may do as he likes, but I'm going to cross the gully and sleep to-night under my own vine and fig-tree, so to speak. My six months' residence begins to-night!”

”Fig-tree!” Marjorie exclaimed. ”The trees around here are just about high enough to tickle your ear--when you're lying down.”

”You haven't seen the trees yet,” said Jack, knowingly. ”Now, let's pitch camp.”

We went back to the wagon, but Buck positively refused to be disturbed.

Neither coaxing, nor proddings, nor pullings, nor pus.h.i.+ngs, were of any avail; get up he would not.

”He's a squatter,” said Jack. ”A genuine squatter, and he refuses to be dispossessed. We must work around him.” So we unhitched Bright, and by great effort unharnessed Buck, and left him until the spirit should move him. We dragged the tent close to the brow of the gully and pitched it on the spot where we had planned that my shack should be. We also unloaded part of our equipment so that we could make use of it in the housekeeping operations. It was with great zest that we carried our cookstove to the door of the tent and strung up two or three lengths of pipe. In a few minutes Jack appeared from somewhere with an armful of bits of wood, and as the darkness settled down we gathered about a fire on our own farms, for the first time in our lives.

The girls unpacked some of the supplies, and I was commissioned to milk our cow, and presently Marjorie was flip-flapping pancakes on the ”spider” with the art of a mature housewife. ”We should have sour milk for these,” she protested, as she served the first helping.

”If that cow had been much longer on the road I think she would have been able to supply you,” I ventured. ”She has been looking sadder every day.”

”She's a great inst.i.tution. Henceforth I consider a cow as necessary a part of travel equipment as a suit-case.”

And so we chattered on, saying nothing of moment, but feeling the great joy of possession welling in our hearts. It was a day and a night to be lived over many a time in memory. For the first time in our lives we were drinking of the wells of possession,--the enchanted streams which draw men and women into the wilderness to live and die on the outposts of civilization.

We had finished supper, and the grey gloom of twilight was crawling slowly up from the east when a sharp, whistling rustle almost above us brought the girls to their feet with a start.

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