There the boys sat, hugely enjoying the situation, while the others were loading the wagon and yoking the oxen on the other side. The lads could hear the cheery sounds of the men talking, although they could not see them through the trees that lined the farther bank of the river. The flow of the stream made a ceaseless lapping against the brink of the sh.o.r.e. A party of catbirds quarrelled sharply in the thicket hard by; quail whistled in the underbrush of the adjacent creek, and overhead a solitary eagle circled slowly around as if looking down to watch these rude invaders of the privacy of the dominion that had existed ever since the world began.

Hugging his knees in measureless content, as they sat in the gra.s.s by the river, Sandy asked, almost in a whisper, "Have you ever been homesick since we left Dixon, Oscar?"

"Just once, Sandy; and that was yesterday when I saw those nice-looking ladies at the fort out walking in the morning with their children. That was the first sight that looked like home since we crossed the Missouri."

"Me, too," answered Sandy, soberly. "But this is just about as fine as anything can be. Only think of it, Oscar! There are buffalo and antelopes within ten or fifteen miles of here. I know, for Younkins told me so. And Indians,--not wild Indians, but tame ones that are at peace with the whites. It seems too good to have happened to us; doesn't it, Oscar?"

Once more the wagon was blocked up for a difficult ford, the lighter and more perishable articles of its load being packed into a dugout, or canoe hollowed from a sycamore log, which was the property of Younkins, and used only at high stages of the water. The three men guided the wagon and oxen across while Charlie, stripped to his shirt, pushed the loaded dugout carefully over, and the two boys on the other bank, full of the importance of the event, received the solitary voyager, unloaded the canoe, and then transferred the little cargo to the wagon. The caravan took its way up the rolling ground of the prairie to the log-cabin. Willing hands unloaded and took into the house the tools, provisions, and clothes that const.i.tuted their all, and, before the sun went down, the settlers were at home.

While in Manhattan, they had supplied themselves with potatoes; at Fort Riley they had bought fresh beef from the sutler. Sandy made a glorious fire in the long-disused fireplace. His father soon had a batch of biscuits baking in the covered kettle, or Dutch oven, that they had brought with them from home. Charlie's contribution to the repast was a pot of excellent coffee, the milk for which, an unaccustomed luxury, was supplied by the thoughtfulness of Mrs.

Younkins. So, with thankful hearts, they gathered around their frugal board and took their first meal in their new home.

When supper was done and the cabin, now lighted by the scanty rays of two tallow candles, had been made tidy for the night, Oscar took out his violin, and, after much needed tuning, struck into the measure of wild, warbling "Dundee." All hands took the hint, and all voices were raised once more to the words of Whittier's song of the "Kansas Emigrants." Perhaps it was with new spirit and new tenderness that they sang,--

"No pause, nor rest, save where the streams That feed the Kansas run, Save where the pilgrim gonfalon Shall flout the setting sun!"

"I don't know what the pilgrim's gonfalon is," said Sandy, sleepily, "but I guess it's all right." The emigrants had crossed the prairies as of old their father had crossed the sea. They were now at home in the New West. The night fell dark and still about their lonely cabin as, with hope and trust, they laid them down to peaceful dreams.

CHAPTER IX.

SETTING THE STAKES.

"We mustn't let any gra.s.s grow under our feet, boys," was Mr. Aleck Howell's energetic remark, next morning, when the little party had finished their first breakfast in their new home.

"That means work, I s'pose," replied Oscar, turning a longing glance to his violin hanging on the side of the cabin, with a broken string crying for repairs.

"Yes, and hard work, too," said his father, noting the lad's look.

"Luckily for us, Brother Aleck," he continued, "our boys are not afraid of work. They have been brought up to it, and although I am thinking they don't know much about the sort of work that we shall have to put in on these beautiful prairies, I guess they will buckle down to it. Eh?" and the loving father turned his look from the gra.s.sy and rolling plain to his son's face.

Sandy answered for him. "Oh, yes, Uncle Charlie, we all like work!

Afraid of work? Why, Oscar and I are so used to it that we would be willing to lie right down by the side of it, and sleep as securely as if it were as harmless as a kitten! Afraid of work? Never you fear 'the Dixon boys who fear no noise'--what's the rest of that song?"

n.o.body knew, and, in the laugh that followed, Mr. Howell suggested that as Younkins was coming over the river to show them the stakes of their new claims, the boys might better set an extra plate at dinner-time. It was very good of Younkins to take so much trouble on their account, and the least they could do was to show him proper hospitality.

"What is all this about stakes and quarter-sections, anyway, father?"

asked Sandy. "I'm sure I don't know."

"He doesn't know what quarter-sections are!" shouted Charlie. "Oh, my!

what an ignoramus!"

"Well, what is a quarter-section, as you are so knowing?" demanded Sandy. "I don't believe you know yourself."

"It is a quarter of a section of public land," answered the lad.

"Every man or single woman of mature age--I think that is what the books say--who doesn't own several hundred acres of land elsewhere (I don't know just how many) is ent.i.tled to enter on and take up a quarter of a section of unoccupied public land, and have it for a homestead. That's all," and Charlie looked to his father for approval.

"Pretty good, Charlie," said his uncle. "How many acres are there in a quarter-section of land?"

"Yes, how many acres in a quarter of a section?" shouted Sandy, who saw that his brother hesitated. "Speak up, my little man, and don't be afraid!"

"I don't know," replied the lad, frankly.

"Good for you!" said his father. "Never be afraid of saying that you don't know when you do _not_ know. The fear of confessing ignorance is what has wrecked many a young fellow's chances for finding out things he should know."

"Well, boys," said Mr. Bryant, addressing himself to the three lads, "all the land of the United States Government that is open to settlement is laid off in townships six miles square. These, in turn, are laid off into sections of six hundred and forty acres each. Now, then, how much land should there be in a quarter-section?"

"One hundred and sixty acres!" shouted all three boys at once, breathlessly.

"Correct. The Government allows every man, or single woman of mature age, widow or unmarried, to go upon a plot of land, not more than one hundred and sixty acres nor less than forty acres, and to improve it, and live upon it. If he stays there, or 'maintains a continuous residence,' as the lawyers say, for a certain length of time, the Government gives him a t.i.tle-deed at the end of that time, and he owns the land."

"What?--free, gratis, and for nothing?" cried Sandy.

"Certainly," said his uncle. "The homestead law was pa.s.sed by Congress to encourage the settlement of the lands belonging to the Government.

You see there is an abundance of these lands,--so much, in fact, that they have not yet been all laid off into townships and sections and quarter-sections. If a large number of homestead claims are taken up, then other settlers will be certain to come in and buy the lands that the Government has to sell; and that will make settlements grow throughout that locality."

"Why should they buy when they can get land for nothing by entering and taking possession, just as we are going to do?" interrupted Oscar.

"Because, my son, many of the men cannot make oath that they have not taken up Government land somewhere else; and then, again, many men are going into land speculations, and they don't care to wait five years to prove up a homestead claim. So they go upon the land, stake out their claim, and the Government sells it to them outright at the rate of a dollar and a quarter an acre."

"Cash down?" asked Charlie.

"No, they need not pay cash down unless they choose. The Government allows them a year to pay up in. But land speculators who make a business of this sort of thing generally pay up just as soon as they are allowed to, and then, if they get a good offer to sell out, they sell and move off somewhere else, and do the same thing over again."

"People have to pay fees, don't they, Uncle Charlie?" said Sandy. "I know they used to talk about land-office fees, in Dixon. How much does it cost in fees to enter a piece of Government land?"

"I think it is about twenty-five dollars--twenty-six, to be exact,"

replied Mr. Bryant. "There comes Younkins," he added, looking down the trail to the river bank below.

The boys had been washing and putting away the breakfast things while this conversation was going on, and Sandy, balancing in the air a big tin pan on his fingers, asked: "How much land can we fellows enter, all told?" The two men laughed.

"Well, Alexander," said his father, ceremoniously, "We two 'fellows,'

that is to say, your Uncle Charlie and myself, can enter one hundred and sixty acres apiece. Charlie will be able to enter the same quant.i.ty three years from now, when he will be twenty-one; and as for you and Oscar, if you each add to your present years as many as will make you twenty-one, you can tell when you will be able to enter and own the same amount of land; provided it is not all gone by that time.

Good morning, Mr. Younkins." Sandy's pan came down with a crash on the puncheon floor.

The land around that region of the Republican Fork had been surveyed into sections of six hundred and forty acres each; but it would be necessary to secure the services of a local surveyor to find out just where the boundaries of each quarter-section were. The stakes were set at the corner of each section, and Younkins thought that by pacing off the distance between two corners they could get at the point that would mark the middle of the section; then, by running lines across from side to side, thus: [Transcriber's note: An image of a square subdivided into four smaller squares appears here] they could get at the quarter-sections nearly enough to be able to tell about where their boundaries were.

"But suppose you should build a house, or plough a field, on some other man's quarter-section," suggested Charlie, "wouldn't you feel cheap when the final survey showed that you had all along been improving your neighbor's property?"

"There isn't any danger of that," answered Younkins, "if you are smart enough to keep well away from your boundary line when you are putting in your improvements. 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 dest.i.tute 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.