abor which must be
performed.

Now he advanced, whistling cheerily, with a long stride and a swinging
gait that should have carried him over the trail at the rate of four
miles an hour; and not until late in the afternoon did he permit
himself to halt, and partake of the broiled venison.

Then he ate every morsel, and, the meal finished, said aloud with a
low laugh of perfect content:--

"It's lucky I didn't bring any more; for I should eat it to a dead
certainty, an' then I wouldn't be in as good trim for walkin'. Daddy
always says that the less a fellow has in his stomach the easier he
can get over the ground, and the poor old man never struck it truer."

After this halt of fifteen minutes Dick pressed forward without more
delay until he came upon the settlement, at what time he knew not, but
to the best of his belief it was hardly more than an hour past midnight.

There was no thought in his mind of spending any portion of the money
for a bed.

The earth offered such a resting-place as satisfied him; and since the
day his father departed from Willow Point in the hope of finding a
location where he could earn a livelihood with but little labor, Dick
had more often slept upon the ground than elsewhere.

Now he threw himself down by the side of a storehouse, or shed, where
he would be protected from the night wind; and there was hardly more
than time to compose himself for rest before his eyes were closed in
slumber.

No person in Antelope Spring was awake at an earlier hour next morning
than Dick Stevens; for the sun had not yet shown himself when the boy
arose to his feet, and looked around as if to say that he was in fine
condition.

"A tramp of forty-five miles ain't to be sneezed at, an' when you
throw in fifteen miles of desert an' a sand-storm to boot, it's what I
call a pretty good day's work; yet I'm feelin' fine as a fiddle," he
said in a tone of satisfaction, after which he made an apology for a
toilet at the stream near-by.

Dick had no idea in which direction a physician might be found;
therefore he halted in front of the first store he saw to wait until
the proprietor came, half an hour later, to attend to customers.

It was such a shop as one would naturally expect to find in a
settlement among the mountains of Nevada.

From molasses to perfumery, and from ploughs to fish-hooks, the
assortment ran, until one would say all his wants might be supplied
from the stock.

Cheese was what Dick