e
of Medicine Mountain. Evan Lancaster, as he stood bareheaded under the
unclouded sky, looked about him upon acres heavy with tangled grass and
weeds; and pleased with the evident richness of the untouched ground,
and with the sheltered situation of the claim on the bend, swore that
the white-topped schooner, with its travel-stained crew of three, had
found on the yellow billows of that northern prairie its permanent
moorings at last.

The felling and hewing of cottonwoods for the shack had occupied the
first few weeks that followed, citizen carpenters from Brannon doing the
heavy cutting and lifting. But when the little house stood, its square
log room and dirt floor open to the sun, Dallas performed her part of
the building, and thatched the hip-roof with coarse grass from a meadow.
Next, the well was dug; and the barn built as a lean-to, for the
Lancasters knew little, but had heard much, about the blizzards of the
territory. Then, while the elder girl covered the slanting rafters over
Ben and Betty's stall, the section-boss hauled a scanty stock of hay and
provisions from Clark's, a cattle-camp and settlement to the northeast.
And finally, when shack and barn were alike done, Dallas put the mules
to the end of an oak beam and took up the task of plowing.

Now she was winding at a black mat that was gradually growing upon the
brown carpet of the prairie. Up and down she walked, her whiplash
trailing behind her like a lively snake, her hands striving to guide the
cleaving share she followed, a look of deep content, despite all fear
for bad weather, upon her sun-browned face.

But while, working the morning hours slowly away, she gave full
attention to the nodding mules and the young bull straggling at their
head, she did not stop to watch the flocks winging by above her, or to
look off to where the plains fell away from the pale azure line of the
sky. So she failed to see, at the middle of the long forenoon, a group
of dark figures that came into sight to the eastward and moved slowly
forward in the direction of the bend.

Toward noon, however, the furrows were turned less regularly. Ben and
Betty were so tired that they no longer drew evenly, but wavered from
side to side. Again and again the off mule jerked the share out of the
sod; each time Dallas patiently circled the team and steered it back
into place again, for her arms were not strong enough to swing the plow
on the whiffletrees. And each time Simon caug