l, with
mighty bones and sinews and work-toughened muscles to justify their
stature. Behind them stood their home, a shack better suited for the
housing of cattle than of men. But such leather-skinned men as these
were more tender to their horses than to themselves. They slept and
ate in the shack, but they lived in the wind and the sun.

Although they had looked down the stern slopes to the lower Rockies,
they did not see the girl who followed the loosely winding trail. She
was partly sheltered by the firs and came out just above them. They
began moiling at the stump again, sweating, cursing, and the girl
halted her horse near by. The profanity did not distress her. She was
so accustomed to it that the words had lost all edge and point for
her; but her freckled face stirred to a smile of pleasure at the sight
of their strength, as they alternately smote at the taproot and then
strove in creaking, grunting unison to work it loose.

They remained so long oblivious of her presence that at length she
called, "Why don't you dig a bigger hole, boys?"

She laughed in delight as they jerked up their heads in astonishment.
Her laughter was young and sweet to the ear, but there was not a great
deal outside her laughter that was attractive about her.

However, Joe and Harry gaped and grinned and blushed at her in the
time-old fashion, for she lived in a country where to be a woman is
sufficient, beauty is an unnecessary luxury, soon taxed out of
existence by the life. She possessed the main essentials of social
power; she could dance unflaggingly from dark to dawn at the nearest
schoolhouse dance, chattering every minute; and she could maintain a
rugged silence from dawn to dark again, as she rode her pony home.

Harry Campbell took off his hat, not in politeness, but to scratch his
head. "Say, Jessie, where'd you drop from? Didn't see you coming
no ways."

"Maybe I come down like rain," said Jessie.

All three laughed heartily at this jest.

Jessie swung sidewise in her saddle with the lithe grace of a boy,
dropped her elbow on the high pommel, and gave advice. "You got a
pretty bad taproot under yonder. Better chop out a bigger hole, boys.
But, say, what you clearing this here land for? Ain't no good for
nothing, is it?" She looked around her. Here and there the clearing
around the shanty ate raggedly into the forest, but still the plowed
land was chopped up with a jutting of boulders.

"Sure it ain't no good for not