the unclouded sky.

As we had measured the distance from the township lines by counting the
revolutions of our wagon-wheels, so now with pocket compass and a couple
of laths, Charles and I laid out inner boundaries and claimed three
quarter-sections, one for Frank and one each for ourselves. Level as a
floor these acres were, and dotted with the bones of bison.

We ate our dinner on the bare sod while all around us the birds of
spring-time moved in myriads, and over the swells to the east other
wagons laden with other land-seekers crept like wingless
beetles--stragglers from the main skirmish line.

Having erected our pine-board straddle-bugs with our names written
thereon, we jubilantly started back toward the railway. Tired but
peaceful, we reached Ordway at dark and Mrs. Wynn's supper of ham and
eggs and potatoes completed our day most satisfactorily.

My father, who had planned to establish a little store on his claim, now
engaged me as his representative, his clerk, and I spent the next week
in hauling lumber and in helping to build the shanty and ware-room on
the section line. As soon as the place was habitable, my mother and
sister Jessie came out to stay with me, for in order to hold his
pre-emption my father was obliged to make it his "home."

Before we were fairly settled, my mother was forced to feed and house a
great many land-seekers who had no other place to stay. This brought
upon her once again all the drudgery of a pioneer house-wife, and filled
her with longing for the old home in Iowa. It must have seemed to her as
if she were never again to find rest except beneath the sod.

Nothing that I have ever been called upon to do caused me more worry
than the act of charging those land-seekers for their meals and bunks,
and yet it was perfectly right that they should pay. Our buildings had
been established with great trouble and at considerable expense, and my
father said, "We cannot afford to feed so many people without return,"
and yet it seemed to me like taking an unfair advantage of poor and
homeless men. It was with the greatest difficulty that I brought myself
to charge them anything at all. Fortunately the prices had been fixed by
my father.

Night by night it became necessary to lift a lantern on a high pole in
front of the shack, in order that those who were traversing the plain
after dark might find their way, and often I was aroused from my bed by
the arrival of a worn and bewildered part