s money to be made there--and one flag is almost as good as
another. Of course this will right itself in time; the first flood of
land-seekers are soil-miners, but the second are home-builders--the
man said that too; you see I'm picking things up; I want to know
about something besides the weather--and when that second flood comes
this country won't know itself.

"But to come back to the hotel; that's what I did when I had taken a
good walk about the little town, and admired myself almost homesick
looking at fine horses tied to hitching-posts and fine men swaggering
about in the abandon of cow-boy costumes. One thing I have learned
already, and the discovery shocked me a little at first; the cow-boy
considers himself better clay than the farmer--the 'sod-buster' he
calls him--and treats him with good-humoured contempt. I wanted to
ask someone about Arthurs, and I didn't like to inquire in the hotel.
There was a lot of drinking going on there. But near the door were
two young men talking, and I overheard one of them mention Arthurs'
name. Pulling myself together, I asked him if he could tell me where
Arthurs lived.

"'Yes, miss,' he answered, lifting a big hat and showing when he
spoke a clean set of teeth. 'It's twenty-five miles up the river.
Were you expecting him to meet you?'

"I explained that I had intended to drop in on them by surprise, but
I had had no idea they lived so far from town.

"'Oh, that's not far,' he said. 'Can you ride?'

"Everybody here rides horseback. It's the standard means of
locomotion. And the women ride astride. I was a bit shocked at first,
but you soon get used to it. But twenty-five miles is different from
a romp round the pasture-field, so I said I was afraid not.

"'Arthurs is coming down with the buck-board,' remarked the other
man. 'I passed him on the trail as I came in.'

"Sure enough, a little later Arthurs himself drew up at the hotel. I
wouldn't have known him, but one of the young men pointed him out,
and it would have done you good to see how he received me.

"'And you are Jack and Mary's daughter,' he said, taking both my
hands in his, and holding me at arm's length for a moment. Then,
before I knew it, he had drawn me up and kissed me. But I didn't
care. All of a sudden it seemed to me that I had found a real father.
It seems hard to say it, but that is how I felt.

"Well, he just couldn't keep away from me all evening. He showered me
with questions about you and