iful slopes on which the intending settlers were now looking for
an opportunity to lay out their two claims. The two men looked at each
other. Could they divide and settle this far apart for the sake of
getting a timber lot?

It was Sandy who solved the problem. "I'll tell you what to do,
father!" he cried, eagerly: "you take up the timber claim on the North
Branch, and we boys can live there; then you and Uncle Charlie can
keep one of the claims here. We can build two cabins, and you old
folks can live in one, and we in another."

The fathers exchanged glances, and Mr. Howell said, "I don't see how I
could live without Sandy and Charlie."

[Illustration: YOUNKINS ARGUED THAT SETTLERS WERE ENTITLED TO ALL THEY
COULD GET AND HOLD.]

Younkins brightened up at Sandy's suggestion; and he added that the
two men might take up two farming claims, side by side, and let the
boys try and hold the timber claim on the North Branch. Thus far,
there was no rush of emigration to the south side of the Republican
Fork. Most of the settlers went further to the south; or they halted
further east, and fixed their stakes along the line of the Big Blue
and other more accessible regions.

"We'll chance it, won't we, Aleck?" said Mr. Bryant.

Mr. Howell looked vaguely off over the rolling slope on which they
were standing, and said: "We will chance it with the boys on the
timber land, but I am not in favor of taking up two claims here. Let
the timber claim be in my name or yours, and the boys can live on it.
But we can't take up two claims here and the timber besides--three in
all--with only two full-grown men among the whole of us. That stands
to reason."

Younkins was a little puzzled by the strictness with which the two
newcomers were disposed to regard their rights and duties as actual
settlers. He argued that settlers were entitled to all they could get
and hold; and he was in favor of the party's trying to hold three
claims of one hundred and sixty acres each, even if there were only
two men legally entitled to enter homesteads. Wouldn't Charlie be of
age before the time came to take out a patent for the land?

"But he is not of age to enter upon and hold the land now," said his
father, stiffly.

So it was settled that the two men should enter upon the quarter-section
of farming land, and build a cabin as soon as convenient, and that the
claim on the North Fork, which had a fine grove of timber on it,
should be set apart for