mprovements. Some men are not smart enough,
though. There was a man over on Chapman's Creek who wanted to have
his log-cabin on a pretty rise of ground-like, that was on the upper
end of his claim. He knew that the line ran somewhere about there;
but he took chances-like, and when the line was run, a year after
that, lo, and behold! his house and garden-like were both clean
over into the next man's claim."

"What did he do?" asked Charlie. "Skip out of the place?"

"Sho! No, indeed! His neighbor was a white man-like, and they just
took down the cabin and carried it across the boundary line and set it
up again on the man's own land. He's livin' there yet; but he lost his
garden-like; couldn't move that, you see"; and Younkins laughed one of
his infrequent laughs.

The land open to the settlers on the south side of the Republican Fork
was all before them. Nothing had been taken up within a distance as
far as they could see. Chapman's Creek, just referred to by Younkins,
was eighteen or twenty miles away. From the point at which they stood
and toward Chapman's, the land was surveyed; but to the westward the
surveys ran only just across the creek, which, curving from the north
and west, made a complete circuit around the land and emptied into the
Fork, just below the fording-place. Inside of that circuit, the land,
undulating, and lying with a southern exposure, was destitute of
trees. It was rich, fat land, but there was not a tree on it except
where it crossed the creek, the banks of which were heavily wooded.
Inside of that circuit somewhere, the two men must stake out their
claim. There was nothing but rich, unshaded land, with a meandering
woody creek flowing through the bottom of the two claims, provided
they were laid out side by side. The corner stakes were found, and
the men prepared to pace off the distance between the corners so as to
find the centre.

"It is a pity there is no timber anywhere," said Howell, discontentedly.
"We shall have to go several miles for timber enough to build our
cabins. We don't want to cut down right away what little there is
along the creek."

"Timber?" said Younkins, reflectively. "Timber? Well, if one of you
would put up with a quarter-section of farming land, then the other
can enter some of the timber land up on the North Branch."

Now, the North Branch was two miles and a half from the cabin in which
the Dixon party were camped; and that cabin was two miles from the
beaut