ON THE CLAIM

The sending of the money and the horses by the wealthy wheat-raiser indicated to the lumbermen that they would do themselves no harm by rendering every assistance in their power to his protÉgÉs, and Steve was quick to recognize the fact.

“I told the boys, if Si said the word, I’d take one of my riggings over, clear the land, and buy the logs from them,” he announced.

“What makes you think the claim they are going to take up is anywhere near here?” demanded Andy.

“Oh, come off! I’m not a fool. It’s just the place for them, too.”

“Let’s go up and have supper,” suggested Ted. “I’m right hungry and we can talk just as well there. Come on, Andy!”

“But 18 might come in.”

“It’ll be the first time she ever got here before midnight, if she does,” commented Jim. “Call up and find out where she is.”

Jumping to his telegraph instrument, Andy beat a veritable tattoo on the key as he asked for 18’s whereabouts, finally announcing:

“She’ll be here in an hour.”

“Then we shall have plenty of time. Come on!” cried Phil, springing to the ground.

“Hold on!” called Andy. “When we’re at the store, ‘mum is the word.’”

“That’s mean, especially to Jennie,” protested Ted. “She and Peleg are almost wild with curiosity, and it can’t do any harm to tell them about things.”

“It can’t, eh? You don’t know Peleg,” retorted the agent. “If he knew where you are going to settle, he’d beat you to it.”

“We needn’t tell him that, especially as we don’t know ourselves, but I can’t see any harm in talking over other matters,” declared Phil.

“Sure! Let Jennie and Peleg in on the excitement,” urged Steve, and accordingly it was agreed that they should be told of Mr. Hopkins’ sending the horses and of his promised visit but not of his forwarding any money.

“What relation be you to Si?” queried the storekeeper of Phil, when he had been told the facts.

“Isn’t that the whistle of old 18?” exclaimed Steve, ere either of the boys could speak.

“That’s what it is,” asserted Andy, after a moment’s pretended listening. “Who’s going down to the track with me?”

Having purposely created the diversion that there might be no necessity of answering Peleg, Steve quickly announced that he, the boys, and Jim were going.

“Oh, I wish I could. I’ve never seen horses unloaded from a car,” exclaimed Jennie, wistfully.

“You shall. Come on!” cried Ted.

“You can’t, nuther. There won’t be no one to watch the store unless I stay and I want to go,” whined the storekeeper.

“I guess I can’t go,” sighed his daughter. “I’ve got to stay here.”

“You’ll do no such thing. It won’t hurt Peleg to stay himself,” answered the boy, and, seizing her hand, he hurried her along.

They were obliged to wait a good half-hour, however, before the train arrived.

“Aren’t they beauties?” cried Phil, as the three horses stood on the ground.

“They sure are, and kind and easy to ride as kittens,” declared Andy. “Si was afraid you might not be much on riding, so he sent two of his grandchildren’s ponies.”

“Yours is a man-eater, I suppose?” grinned Jim.

“Well, there’s some folks I know couldn’t ride him,” retorted the agent. “Here, Phil, you and Ted take your choice. This sorrel is Pat, and the roan is Daisy.”

“Which do you want, Ted?” asked his brother. “You are the elder, it’s your first choice.”

“Then I’ll take Pat, he’s bigger.”

“Good! Here are the saddles and bridles. Put them on and we’ll ride up to the store,” said Andy.

But before they could obey, it was necessary to show the boys how to place the saddles and tighten the girths, for they did not know a cinch from a throat-latch. And fortunate it was that Mr. Hopkins had selected clever and gentle ponies, for the young homesteaders were sorry riders.

“Never mind, a baby can manage them, and you’ll soon catch on to the trick of sitting in a saddle,” said Steve, as they made the animals fast for the night in the store shed. “There’s one thing not to forget—whether you go without food and water, or not, be sure that Pat and Daisy don’t. A good horseman always takes care of his pony before he does of himself. If you ever need a horse, you’ll need it badly, and a pony will do more for a person who is kind to it than for one who isn’t. And don’t think a horse doesn’t know the difference, for it does.”

The animals attended to, Andy and the boys went into the store, where they purchased a supply of provisions, axes, woodmen’s hatchets, shovels, hammers and nails, and rifles and revolvers, with the necessary shells and cartridges.

“Ever do any shooting?” asked the agent, while Peleg was packing their stuff in stout sacks.

“Only a little, in shooting galleries,” returned Phil.

“Then you must learn. Peleg, you’d better triple that order of shells and cartridges.” Then, turning again to the boys, he continued: “You ought to practise, say, half an hour every day. You never know when you may stumble across a bear in these forests. When you get your cattle, you’re more than likely to be visited by mountain lions, and when you shoot at a bear or a lion, you want to shoot straight.”

Every minute that they were in the woods gave Phil and Ted a clearer understanding of the fact that they were in that part of the world where men were accustomed to rely upon their own resources and ingenuity, and the realization was rapidly developing them from care-free, happy-go-lucky school boys into sober manhood.

While the station agent had been dilating upon the necessity of being able to use their firearms intelligently, Phil and Ted had been handling the weapons, but their awkwardness showed they knew practically nothing about them.

“If I can’t read, I can shoot,” exclaimed Jennie. “Let me show you, Ted.” And taking his rifle, she explained to him how to load and empty the magazine and to hold the rifle when shooting, doing the same with the big 44 revolver. Then she made the boy go through the motions himself until, at last, he felt at home in working the different mechanisms.

“Remember,” she said, finally, “always to keep your guns clean and oiled and your shells and cartridges dry.”

“And if I was you, I’d sleep on my shooting irons,” advised Peleg. “Then you’ll know where they are and no one can steal them from you.”

“You talk as though this was a desperate country,” laughed Phil.

“It isn’t that, it’s like it is with the ponies—when you need your guns, you’ll need them mighty bad,” put in Andy. “And now that everything’s ready, you’d best go to bed. We start at five tomorrow morning.”

Though the boys went to their room, they had so many things to talk over that it was a long while before they went to sleep. Yet they were up betimes, fed their ponies, ate a hearty breakfast, and were on their way only a little after the hour set by their guide.

Because of the packs tied to each saddle and the inexperience of the boys in riding, they travelled slowly.

“How much farther is it to our section?” asked Phil, after they had been in the saddle more than two hours.

“Getting tired?” inquired Andy.

“No-o. I was only wondering how we’d ever get Momsy and the girls to our homestead.” Smiling at the excuse, their guide replied:

“Oh, you will be able to put a road through before they come. Your claim is only about twenty-five miles from the station at Chikau.”

“My eye! That will be some haul for our provisions,” declared Ted.

“Oh, you’ll go to Bradley for them, that will be only fifteen miles from where your claim is. But I wouldn’t go there very often. It’s a pretty bad place, especially at night.”

All during their advance through the woods, Andy had chopped off branches at intervals of a rod or so, leaving the partially severed limbs hanging and occasionally cutting the bark from a tree trunk.

“Why do you do that?” asked Phil.

“I’m blazing the trail, so you can ride over, whenever you like, without danger of getting lost. At first, when you go about your claim, you had better do the same. This is a bad country to get lost in, and to any one who doesn’t know the woods it’s mighty easy to miss the way.”

“But why don’t you cut the branches clean off?” queried Ted.

“Because a cut, or broken, hanging branch is everywhere the sign of a trail.”

Now mounting sharp inclines, now descending into gullies, the trio advanced, finally coming to a ridge below which extended a wooded flat.

“There’s your claim,” announced Andy, drawing rein. “At least, if I were you I’d choose it, but you can take up any of the land we’ve crossed, or in any direction you can see.”

As they realized they were looking upon the spot selected by both Mr. Hopkins and their guide as the site of their homestead, the boys gazed about them, too deeply affected to speak for many minutes.

“I’d like it if it weren’t all covered with trees,” finally declared Phil.

“You didn’t expect plowed ground, did you?” demanded their companion, sharply.

“I think it is perfectly bully!” quickly exclaimed Ted. “Look, Phil, there is a brook, to the right, from which we can get water for irrigation.”

“Exactly,” returned Andy. “You couldn’t find another quarter section so level, with the water so handy, yet having a sufficient fall to serve your land, if you searched a hundred miles.”

“But the trees,” protested the elder boy. “They seem thicker than where Steve is logging.”

“That’s because you are looking down on them. As a matter of fact, you’ll be surprised to see how much clearing there is when you get down there. But after you have been at work a couple of weeks, you’ll see a big difference.”

“The stumps will be left, though. And we’ve got to put some land under cultivation this year, you know.”

“Dynamite will remove the stumps for you. What do you think, do you want to stake your claim here?”

Quickly the boys looked at one another, doubt in the elder’s eyes, confidence in Ted’s.

“Yes, indeed, we do!” asserted the younger, emphatically. “At least, I do. If you don’t like it, you can select a place for yourself, Phil.”

“If it suits you, it suits me, Ted.”

“Then come on, let’s get onto it!”

Led by Andy, they were soon on the flat, and in a few more minutes their guide drew rein on the bank of the creek.

“Here’s a likely place to build your shake-down,” he declared.

Dismounting, they took the packs from the saddles, hobbled the ponies, and, under Andy’s directions, fell to work cutting poles, placing them and thatching a hut of boughs, some ten feet long, five wide and six high.

Taking the hammer and nails, their companion drove a row along each side of the roof-pole.

“Always hang your provisions up,” he said, as he suited his actions to his words. “That is, until you have your log cabin, and it’s not a bad plan even then. It saves them from ants and all sorts of prowling animals. And now let’s get dinner.”

“That suits me,” exclaimed Ted. “What shall we have? I can fry eggs.”

“There, we forgot to get a stove, Andy!” exclaimed the elder boy. “That’s one on you. We’re in a pretty fix, miles from anywhere with nothing on which to cook.”

“You sure don’t know much about an entry-man’s life,” chuckled the agent. “You don’t need a stove yet. Just come down to the brook and I’ll show you a trick. How do you suppose trappers and men who roam the woods cook their meals? They can’t be carrying stoves about with them.” And going to the water, he selected a thin flat stone, built others up on three sides and placed the first one upon them.

“There’s your stove. Now build a fire underneath and in a few minutes it will be so hot you can fry your eggs on it. Make another fire and set your coffee-pot in it.

“One thing you must be careful about, though. Always put out your fire—and see that it is out—before you leave it. If you don’t, you may start a forest fire that will take months to put out and destroy thousands of dollars’ worth of lumber.”

While Ted fried the eggs, Phil brought out crackers, jam, and pickles, and in due course the dinner was ready.

“Just think, Phil, we’re having our first meal on our very, very own homestead!” exclaimed Ted.

“And here’s success, and the best of it to you!” said Andy, raising his tin cupful of coffee.

Silently and solemnly the three clinked their cups and drank the toast.