all satisfied with their work and their way
of living.

"I furnish them meat and bread," he said, "and they do their own
cooking, and I've been cooking my own meals, too."

"What sort of a cook are you, Jack."

"Well, I guess I weigh at least ten pounds more than I did when you left
here. Whether it is good cooking or not, I don't know; but it is good,
wholesome fare. I made coffee just as you taught me. I'm not good at
making biscuit, but I can make a good hoe-cake."

They went into Jack's kitchen, and looking at his utensils, saw that he
had a place for everything, and everything in its place.

"Jack; how did you learn to cook so well?" Terry asked.

"Why, I used to help mother a good deal, and I have the timber brought
up and cut and piled away, so it is easy to build a fire. I had a well
driven down in the yard out there, and a pump attached to it. It is not
as good water as that down at the spring, but it is better than the
average well around through this State, and I didn't have to drive down
but thirty feet, either."

"Good! If you were wrecked on a lone island, you would get along all
right, my boy. What is the bill of fare at your hotel now?

"Just anything you want that the market affords. When I want fish I go
but to the lake and get it. When I want quail or prairie chicken they
come right up to the house to be shot."

"All right, Jack. We'll help you cook, and if anything more is needed
than the market here affords, we will get it from Crabtree."

On further inspection they found that he didn't have a carpet in the
house, but that he had good sheets and blankets and pillows and
first-class mattresses.

"Fred," said Terry, "we'll have to live in this house until Jack gets
his home finished. We'll measure the size of those two rooms back there,
and one of us must go back to town to-morrow, buy carpets, have them
made, and lay in all other necessaries for Evelyn's comfort, and let her
invite some of the ladies up there to come down and rough it with us as
long as they are willing to do so. Evelyn, of course, will go with us
and assist us in making the purchases."

They went out into the stable lot, saw the horses kept there. Then they
visited the cow lot and their barns, and saw that the milch-cows were
looking well, and, of course, fat and yielding an abundant supply of
milk, which Jack sent up to Crabtree every day, besides having plenty of
butter and milk for all the cowboys in their employ.