his share of the work. "Damn yeh!" he cried, as Gillispie appeared.
"Where yeh been?"

"Making garden," responded Gillispie, slowly.

"Making garden!" Henderson indulged in some more harmless oaths.

Just then Gillispie drew from under his coat a large and friendly
looking apple-pie. "Yes," he said, with emphasis; "I've bin a-makin'
garden fur Mis' Ford."

And so it came about that the three Johns knew her and served her, and
that she never had a need that they were not ready to supply if they
could. Not one of them would have thought of going to town without
stopping to inquire what was needed at the village. As for Catherine
Ford, she was fighting her way with native pluck and maternal
unselfishness. If she had feared solitude she did not suffer from it.
The activity of her life stifled her fresh sorrow. She was pleasantly
excited by the rumors that a railroad was soon to be built near the
place, which would raise the value of the claim she was "holding down"
many thousand dollars.

It is marvellous how sorrow shrinks when one is very healthy and very
much occupied. Although poverty was her close companion, Catherine had
no thought of it in this primitive manner of living. She had come out
there, with the independence and determination of a Western woman, for
the purpose of living at the least possible expense, and making the most
she could while the baby was "getting out of her arms." That process
has its pleasures, which every mother feels in spite of burdens, and
the mind is happily dulled by nature's merciful provision. With a little
child tugging at the breast, care and fret vanish, not because of the
happiness so much as because of a certain mammal complacency, which
is not at all intellectual, but serves its purpose better than the
profoundest method of reasoning.

So without any very unbearable misery at her recent widowhood, this
healthy young woman worked in field and house, cared for her little
ones, milked the two cows out in the corral, sewed, sang, rode, baked,
and was happy for very wholesomeness. Sometimes she reproached herself
that she was not more miserable, remembering that long grave back in
the unkempt little prairie cemetery, and she sat down to coax her sorrow
into proper prominence. But the baby cooing at her from its bunk, the
low of the cattle from the corral begging her to relieve their heavy
bags, the familiar call of one of her neighbors from without, even
the burning sky of the s