oke. The
plough was to remain where it was. Ensconced upon the more
altitudinous seat of authority he swung his lash out with a report like
a starting-gun and made his way, with the necessary language, across
the open and up Claxton Road.

Jonas's trip to the ranch took longer than it takes to tell it. But
there is not, in truth, anything about the trip itself to tell--and yet
there ought to be some way of describing time. Under the
circumstances, and especially as oxen cannot be hurried, it might be
well to pass the time by talking about Jonas Hicks's past; it will be
better than to take up the scenery again. In those parts the scenery,
if the weather remains settled, is rather uneventful; it is the same
when you arrive as when you started. On a prairie the human mind
carries its own scenery.

Jonas Hicks's past had been somewhat variegated and thus all of a
piece. Some years before the present moment, when the railroad was
younger and the "garden spot of the world" was just beginning to
attract attention to its future, Jonas carelessly acquired a patch of
forty acres near the new town of Thornton. At that time he was still
"on the drive," a vocation which took him with the big herds anywhere
from Texas to Fort Benton in Montana. In the calling of cowboy he had,
by a process of natural selection, risen and gradually settled into the
character of cook. Risen, we say, because, in a cattle outfit, there
is not a more important and unquestioned personage; his word is law and
they call him pet names. However, from the day he got down out of the
saddle, in an emergency, and consented to act in the capacity of
"Ma,"--which was a joke,--he was in continual demand as cook, with
increasing popularity. Though he still claimed the ability to ride and
rope and hog-tie with the best of them, he was thenceforth a cook with
all the cook's perquisites and autocratic say-so. There is nowhere, we
might observe, so deep an indication of the true power of Woman as this
respect that is paid to her position, even when it is being occupied by
a red-faced being who wears whiskers and who has no real right, of his
own, to be anything more than an equal of his brother man. But the
cook's laws must not be disobeyed; they allow him to make laws because
he is cook; masculine sentiment is on his side; human welfare demands
it. As Jonas was popular in the position, and did not mind the work
when it was appreciated, he continued to fr