little girl, thinking of the bounty for gopher brushes that her big
brothers had offered her the day before, the galloping echoed a different
song: _A-cent-for-a-tail, a-cent-for-a-tail, a-cent-for-a-tail_, it sang
in her ears, till she struck the pony a welt on the flanks with the ends
of her long rope reins, and jerked his head impatiently toward the
shallow ford that led to the home of the Swede boy.

* * * * *

THE morning before, the little girl's mother and the three big brothers
had held an indignation meeting in the timothy meadow, which, once the
choicest bit of hay land on the farm, was now so thickly strewn with
wide, brown gopher-mounds, that the little girl, with a good running
start down the barren corn strip, could cross it without touching a
spear of grass, by bopping from one hillock to another. But while this
amused her very much, for she pretended that the knolls were muskrat
houses in a deep, deep slough, it only enraged her mother and the big
brothers. For the gray gophers had intrenched themselves so well in the
timothy, and had thrown up such damaging earthworks, that only a scythe
could save what little hay remained; and they had not only taken into
their burrows--as had been discovered the week before--all the freshly
dropped seed from the barren corn strip, but had dug up kernels all over
the field when they were sprouting into stalks.

The meadow had lain fallow the summer before, and had served no further
use than the grazing of some picketed cows. Then, one parching July day
it had been cut, to kill the thistles and pigweed that overran it, and
in the following May had been plowed, dragged, and sown to wild timothy.
The few mounds dotting it had been turned under with the belief that,
between the fallow and the new plowing, the gophers would be driven out.
Instead, they had kept to their burrows and, all in good time, had
tripled their number.

So, as the little girl's mother and the big brothers stood on the edge
of the timothy and viewed the concave stretch that should have showed
green and waving from its rim to the boggy center, they planned the
destruction of the rodents, and declared that if any escaped death by
poison, the little girl should snare them and receive a cent for each
tail.

When her mother's calico slat-sunbonnet and the big hats of her big
brothers had bobbed out of sight across the corn, the little girl sat
down upon a hillock and c