rang merrily, and soon she was permitted to go inside and look up at the
great sky which roofed it in. This was an emotional moment to her. As
she sat there listening to the voices of the men who were drawing this
fragile shelter around her, a great awe fell upon her. It seemed as if
she had drawn a little nearer to the Almighty Creator of the universe.
Here, where no white man had ever set foot, she was watching the
founding of her own house. Was it a home? Could it ever be a home?

Swiftly the roof closed over her head, and the floor crept under her
feet. The stove came in, and the flour-barrel, and the few household
articles which they had brought followed, and as the sun was setting
they all sat down to supper in her new home.

The smell of the fresh pine was round them. Geese were flying over.
Cranes were dancing down by the ponds, prairie-chickens were _booming_.
The open doorway--doorless yet--looked out on the sea-like plain
glorified by the red sun just sinking over the purple line of treeless
hills to the west. It was the bare, raw materials of a State, and they
were in at the beginning of it.

After Bailey left them the husband and wife sat in silence. When they
spoke it was in low voices. It seemed as if God could hear what they
said--that He was just there behind the glory of the western clouds.

II

MAY

Day by day the plain thickened with life. Each noon a crowd of
land-seekers swarmed about the Moggason Ranch asking for food and
shelter, and Blanche, responding to Rivers' entreaties, went down to
cook, returning each night to her bed. Rivers professed to be very
grateful for her aid.

All ages and sexes came to take claims. Old men, alone and feeble,
school teachers from the East, young girls from the towns of the older
counties, boys not yet of age--everywhere incoming claimants were
setting stakes upon the green and beautiful sod.

Each day the grass grew more velvety green. Each day the sky waxed
warmer. The snow disappeared from the ravines. The ice broke up on the
Moggason. The ponds disappeared. Plover flew over with wailing cry.
Buffalo birds, prairie pigeons, larks, blackbirds, sparrows, joined
their voices to those of the cranes and geese and ducks, and the prairie
piped and twittered and clacked and chuckled with life. The gophers
emerged from their winter-quarters, the foxes barked on the hills, the
skunk hobbled along the ravines, and the badger raised mounds of fresh
soil