nd was called
a shack.

They were all alike, these shacks. They had roofs of one slant. They
were built of rough lumber, and roofed with tarred paper, which made all
food taste of tar.

They were dens but little higher than a man's head, and yet they
sheltered the most joyous people that ever set foot to earth. In one
cabin lived a girl and a canary-bird, all alone. In the next a man who
cooked his own food when he did not share his rations with the girl, all
in frank and honorable companionship. On the next claim were two
school-teachers, busy as magpies, using the saw and hammer with deft
accuracy. In the next was a bank-clerk out for his health--and these
clean and self-contained people lived in free intercourse without
slander and without fear. Only the Alsatians settled in groups, alien
and unapproachable. All others met at odd times and places, breathing
in the promiseful air of the clean sod, resolute to put the world of
hopeless failure behind them.

Spring merged magnificently into summer. The grass upthrust. The
waterfowl passed on to the northern lake-region. The morning symphony of
the prairie-chickens died out, but the whistle of the larks, the chatter
of the sparrows, and the wailing cry of the nesting plover came to take
its place.

The gophers whistled and trilled, the foxes barked from the hills, and
an occasional startled antelope or curious wolf passed through the line
of settlement as if to see what lay behind this strange phalanx of
ploughmen guarding their yellow shanties.

Week after week passed away, and the government surveyors did not
appear. The Boomtown _Spike_ told in each issue how the men of the
chain and compass were pushing westward; but still they did not come,
and the settlers' hopes of getting their claims filed before winter grew
fainter. The mass of them had planned to take claims in the spring, live
on them the required six months, "prove up," and return East for the
winter.

In spite of these disappointments, all continued to be merry. No one
took any part of it very seriously. The young men went out and ploughed
when they pleased, and came in and sat on the door-step and talked with
the women when they were weary. The shanties were hot and crowded, but
no one minded that; by-and-by they were to build bigger.

And, then, all was so new and beautiful, and the sky was so clear. Oh,
that marvellous, lofty sky with just clouds enough to make the blue more
intense! Oh, the wo