in Neshonoc
to visit my Uncle Richard, and I was again in the midst of a jocund rush
of land-seekers.

The movement which had begun three years before was now at its height.
Thousands of cars, for lack of engines to move them, were lying idle on
the switches all over the west. Trains swarming with immigrants from
every country of the world were haltingly creeping out upon the level
lands. Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Scotchmen, Englishmen, and Russians
all mingled in this flood of land-seekers rolling toward the sundown
plain, where a fat-soiled valley had been set aside by good Uncle Sam
for the enrichment of every man. Such elation, such hopefulness could
not fail to involve an excitable youth like myself.

My companion, Forsythe, dropped off at Milbank, but I kept on, on into
the James Valley, arriving at Ordway on the evening of the second day--a
clear cloudless evening in early April, with the sun going down red in
the west, the prairie chickens calling from the knolls and hammers still
sounding in the village, their tattoo denoting the urgent need of roofs
to shelter the incoming throng.

The street swarmed with boomers. All talk was of lots, of land. Hour by
hour as the sun sank, prospectors returned to the hotel from their trips
into the unclaimed territory, hungry and tired but jubilant, and as they
assembled in my father's store after supper, their boastful talk of
"claims secured" made me forget all my other ambitions. I was as eager
to clutch my share of Uncle Sam's bounty as any of them. The world
seemed beginning anew for me as well as for these aliens from the
crowded eastern world. "I am ready to stake a claim," I said to my
father.

Early the very next day, with a party of four (among them Charles
Babcock, a brother of Burton), I started for the unsurveyed country
where, some thirty miles to the west, my father had already located a
pre-emption claim and built a rough shed, the only shelter for miles
around.

"We'll camp there," said Charles.

It was an inspiring ride! The plain freshly uncovered from the snow was
swept by a keen wind which held in spite of that an acrid prophecy of
sudden spring. Ducks and geese rose from every icy pond and resumed
their flight into the mystic north, and as we advanced the world
broadened before us. The treelessness of the wide swells, the crispness
of the air and the feeling that to the westward lay the land of the
Sioux, all combined to make our trip a kind of