ttle with the world, out there on the bare prairie,
looking out on what he thought was the scene of his ruin, and thinking
that every man's hand had been against him, and would always be. Where
were now all my dreams of fat cattle, sleek horses, waddling hogs, and
the fine house in which I had had so many visions of spending my life,
with a more or less clearly-seen wife--especially during those days
after Rowena Fewkes had told me how well she could cook, and proved it
by getting me my breakfast; and the later days of my stay in the Grove
of Destiny with Virginia Royall. Any open prairie farm, with no house,
nothing with which to make a house, and no home but a wagon, and no
companions but my cows would have been rather forbidding at first
glance; but this--I was certain I was ruined; I suppose I must have
looked a little bad, for Henderson L. laid his hand on my shoulder.

"Don't cave in, my boy," said he. "You're young--and there's oceans of
good land to be had. Keep a stiff upper lip!"

"I'll kill him!" I shouted. "I'll kill John Rucker!"

"Don't, till you catch him," said Burns. "And what good would it do
anyhow?"

"Is there any plow-land on it?" I asked, after getting control of
myself.

"Some," said Henderson L. cheerfully. "Don't you remember that we drove
up over a spur of the hill back there? Well, all the dry land north of
our track is yours. Finest building-spot in the world, Jake. We'll make
a farm of this yet. Come back and I'll show you."

4

So we went back and looked over all the dry ground I possessed, and
agreed that there were about forty acres of it, and as Burns insisted,
sixty in a dry season; and he stuck to it that a lot of that slew was as
good pasture especially in a dry time as any one could ask for. This
would be fine for a man as fond of cows as I was, though, of course,
cows could range at will all over the country. It was fine hay land, he
said, too, except in the wettest places; but it was true also, that any
one could make hay anywhere.

I paid Henderson L., bade good-by to Magnus Thorkelson, drove my outfit
up on the "building-spot," and camped right where my biggest silo now
stands. I sat there all the afternoon, not even unhitching my teams,
listening as the afternoon drew on toward night, to the bitterns crying
"plum pudd'n'" from the marsh, to the queer calls of the water-rail, and
to the long-drawn "whe-e-ep--whe-e-e-ew!" of the curlews, as they
alighted on the prairie a