of those
subterranean sounds when the door opened and a man, whom father had
hired for the day, put in his head:

"Say, Mr. Gordon, I can't find a spade anywhere," he announced.

"Well, there!" father exclaimed, with a disturbed look, "our spade was
left at the mine the last day that we worked there."

"That's too bad!" the man, who was a neighbor, as neighbors go on the
frontier, said regretfully. "I can go back home and get mine, but the
team's hitched up; it's stopped raining, an' there's a load of posts
on the wagon. Seems 'most a pity for me to take time to go an' hunt up
a spade, but I reckon I'll have to do it. I never saw the man yet that
could dig post holes without one."

"Oh, no, Reynolds, don't stop your work for that; I'll have to bring
mine down; it's about as near to get it from the Gray Eagle as to go
to one of the neighbors; you just go on with your work."

Reynolds withdrew accordingly, and, as the door closed upon him,
father said:

"I'm anxious to earn every dollar I can to help fence that wheat
field, before Horton's cattle 'accidentally' stray into it. I was out
to look at it this morning. The field looks as if covered with a green
carpet, it's coming up so thick. I count it good luck to be able to
get Reynolds to go on with the fence-building while I work in the
mine, for I can exchange work to pay him, while the pay that comes
from the mine is so much cash."

"And when we get our title clear, won't I shoo Mr. Horton's cattle to
the ends of the earth!" I said, resentfully, for we all understood
well enough that the reason that father was so anxious to earn money
was to pay for the final "proving up" on his homestead claim, as well
as to build fences. "I'm teaching Guard to 'heel' on purpose to keep
track of those cattle," I concluded, audaciously, for father didn't
approve of a policy of retaliation.

"Horton's cattle are not to blame," he said now, but the shadow that
always came over his patient face at the mention of our intractable
neighbor settled heavily upon it as he spoke.

"I know the cattle are not to blame," I retorted, with a good deal of
temper. "I just wish that their master himself would come out and
trample on our corn and wallow in our wheat field, instead of driving
his cattle up so that they may do it; I'd set Guard on him with the
greatest pleasure."

"Now, now, Leslie, you shouldn't talk so!" father remonstrated gently.

But here Jessie, whose disposition is much