l keep at it just a little longer," she answered.

"We don' hear ev'ry day thet we live on a town site with a railroad
a-comin'," Lancaster said, following her a few steps. "Better come."

Dallas did not reply. When she was some rods farther on, her father
called to her again.

"Come, Dallas," he urged, "an' stop plowin' up th' streets."

She shook her head, slapped the reins along Ben and Betty's dusty backs
and leaned guidingly on the handles of the plow. And as she travelled
slowly riverward, Simon trotted close behind, tossing his stubby horns
at the red of her underskirt and bawling wearily.

CHAPTER II

A TRIP AND TROUBLE AHEAD

Before Dallas reached the end of her furrow she knew that, for at least
some days to come, her work on the plowed strip must cease. Far and
wide, frontiersmen may have heard of the railroad's coming, and their
first move would be, perhaps had been, a rush to the land-office to file
upon quarter-sections touching the survey. And so, no hour dared be
wasted before her father started on his long-deferred trip. The claim on
the peninsula--the claim which the storekeeper had named as the terminus
of the proposed line, as the probable site for a new town--must at once
be legally theirs.

When the mules were turned eastward again, Dallas brought them up for a
breathing spell and, going apart a little distance, sat down, her knees
between her hands. A short space of time had made incredible changes in
their plans, in the possibilities of their prairie home. Before the
cutting of the last two sods, there had stretched ahead only a
succession of uneventful years, whose milestones would be the growing
record of beeves and bushels. But now--she could not have credited her
senses had it not been for a glimpse of Lounsbury's horse, industriously
cropping beside the lean-to.

She looked across at the shack, squatting on a gentle rise at the
centre of the claim as if it had fled there for refuge out of the grassy
sea whose dry waves lapped up to its very door. Its two small windows,
looking riverward, the narrow door of warped lumber between, and the
shock roof of meadow-grass held down by stones, gave it the appearance
of a grotesque human head that was peering from out the plain. As
Dallas, for the first time, noted the curious resemblance, the shack
seemed to smile back at her--a wise, reassuring smile.

A moment later the north wind hooded the sky with clouds, putting the
bend in g