nking that you did
not yet know how to make your muscles bear an equal strain. Suppose
you try changing legs?"

"Changing legs?" exclaimed both boys at once. "Why, how could we
exchange legs?"

"I know what Uncle Aleck means. I saw you always used the right leg to
jam down the dibble with, and then you kicked the hole full with the
right heel. No wonder your right legs are tired. Change hands and
legs, once in a while, and use the dibble on the left side of you,"
said Charlie, whose driving had tired him quite as thoroughly.

"Isn't Charlie too awfully knowing for anything, Oscar?" said Sandy,
with some sarcasm. Nevertheless, the lad got up, tried the dibble with
his left hand, and saying, "Thanks, Charlie," dropped down upon the
fragrant sod and was speedily asleep, for a generous nooning was
allowed the industrious lads.

CHAPTER XI

AN INDIAN TRAIL.

The next day was Sunday, and, true to their New England training, the
settlers refrained from labor on the day of rest. Mr. Bryant took his
pocket Bible and wandered off into the wild waste of lands somewhere.
The others lounged about the cabin, indoors and out, a trifle sore and
stiff from the effects of work so much harder than that to which they
had been accustomed, and glad of an opportunity to rest their limbs.
The younger of the boy settlers complained that they had worn their
legs out with punching holes in the sod while planting corn. The soles
of their feet were sore with the pressure needed to jam the dibble
through the tough turf. In the afternoon, they all wandered off
through the sweet and silent wilderness of rolling prairie into the
woods in which they proposed to lay off another claim for pre-emption.
At a short distance above their present home, cutting sharply through
the sod, and crossing the Republican Fork a mile or so above their own
ford, was an old Indian trail, which the boys had before noticed but
could not understand. As Charlie and Oscar, pressing on ahead of
their elders, came upon the old trail, they loitered about until the
rest of the party came up, and then they asked what could have cut
that narrow track in the turf, so deep and so narrow.

"That's an Injun trail," said Younkins, who, with an uncomfortably new
suit of Sunday clothes and a smooth-shaven face, had come over to
visit his new neighbors. "Didn't you ever see an Injun trail before?"
he asked, noting the look of eager curiosity on the faces of the boys.
They a