ediate remedy, and I left her wondering
whether I must add the vocation of a carpenter to my already onerous task,
and most of that night I lay wide awake thinking of what she had told me.
When I rose early the next morning, however, my sister was already down
and prepared an unusually good breakfast while I saw to the working
beasts, though she unhesitatingly condemned the whole of the Fairmead
domestic utensils and crockery.

"I am breaking you in gently," she said with a patronizing air. "You have
used those cracked plates since you came here? Then they have lasted quite
long enough, and you cannot fry either pork or bacon in a frying-pan minus
half the bottom. Before you can bring a wife here you will need further
improvement; yes, ever and ever so much, and I hope she will be grateful
to me for civilizing you."

CHAPTER XXI

THE STOLEN CATTLE

I had broken a further strip of virgin prairie, besides ploughing, with
hired assistance, part of the already cultivated land, before the Indian
summer passed. All day pale golden sunlight flooded the whitened grass,
which sometimes glittered with frostwork in early morning, while as the
nights grew longer, the wild fowl came down from the north. Aline took a
strange interest in watching them sail slowly in endless succession across
the blue, and would often sit hidden beside me at twilight among the tall
reeds of the creek until with a lucky shot from the Marlin I picked up a
brant-goose, or, it might be, a mallard which had rested on its southward
journey, somewhat badly shattered by the rifle ball. Then, when frost
bound fast the sod and ploughing was done, she would ride with me toward a
distant bluff, where I hewed stouter logs than grew near us for winter
fuel. Already she had grown fuller in shape and brighter in color with the
pure prairie air.

Jasper paid us frequent visits, and seemed to enjoy being badly defeated
in a verbal encounter with Aline, after which he would confine his talk to
cattle-raising, which of late had commenced to command increased attention
on the prairie.

"This is too much a one-crop country. Stake all on your wheat yield, and
when you lose it you're busted," he said, soon after my return. "Now
what's the matter with running more cattle? They'll feed themselves in the
summer; and isn't there hay enough in the sloos if you want to keep
them?--while one can generally get a good fall profit in Winnipeg. I've
been picking up cheap