built of hewed timber, well chinked and comfortable-like. You can
have it till Ben comes out, and I'm just a-keeping it for Ben, you
know. P'raps he won't want it, and if he doesn't, why, then you and he
can make some kind of a dicker-like, and you might stay on till you
could do better."

"That's a very generous offer of Mr. Younkins's, Charles," said Mr.
Howell to Bryant. "I don't believe we could do better than take it
up."

"No, indeed," burst in the impetuous Sandy. "Why, just think of it! A
house already built!"

"Little boys should be seen, not heard," said his elder brother,
reprovingly. "Suppose you and I wait to see what the old folks have to
say before we chip in with any remarks."

"Oh, I know what Uncle Charlie will say," replied the lad, undismayed.
"He'll say that the Smoky Hill road is the road to take. Say, Uncle
Charlie, you see that Mr. Younkins here is willing to live all alone
on the bank of the Republican Fork, without any neighbors at all. He
isn't afraid of Indians."

Mr. Bryant smiled, and said that he was not afraid of Indians, but he
thought that there might come a time when it would be desirable for a
community to stand together as one man. "Are you a free-State man?" he
asked Younkins. This was a home-thrust. Younkins came from a slave
State; he was probably a pro-slavery man.

"I'm neither a free-State man nor yet a pro-slavery man," he said,
slowly, and with great deliberation. "I'm just for Younkins all
the time. Fact is," he continued, "where I came from most of us are
pore whites. I never owned but one darky, and I had him from my
grandfather. Ben and me, we sorter quarrelled-like over that darky.
Ben, he thought he oughter had him, and I knowed my grandfather left
him to me. So I sold him off, and the neighbors didn't seem to like
it. I don't justly know why they didn't like it; but they didn't.
Then Ben, he allowed that I had better light out. So I lit out, and
here I am. No, I'm no free-State man, and then ag'in, I'm no man for
slavery. I'm just for Younkins. Solomon Younkins is my name."

Bryant was very clearly prejudiced in favor of the settler from the
Republican Fork by this speech; and yet he thought it best to move on
to the fort that day and take the matter into consideration.

So he said that if Younkins would accept the hospitality of their
tent, the Dixon party would be glad to have him pass the night with
them. Younkins had a horse on which he had ridden down fr