402 
THE EURA.E IME W-YOHKEK 
llaivn 28, 
THE LAND OF FULFILLMENT 
A STORY OF HOMESTEADING 
By ROSE SEELYE-MILLER 
(Continued from page 802, February 28.) 
“All but the creek claims, they weren’t 
taken when I drove past but may be 
now; still nobody wants the creek land, 
it’s too rough, steep hill, and low valley, 
and steep hill again.” 
Nate and Norm looked at each other 
blankly. 
“What can one do about this vacant, 
unsurveyed land?” 
“Oh, nothing, except to ‘squat’ on it, 
and hold it till it comes into market.’ 
“When’ll that be?’ 
“No telling, when a railroad goes 
through I reckon, nonody knows when 
that’ll be.” 
Norm turned the oxen and headed them 
east again towards the despised creek 
land. Both boys were keenly disap¬ 
pointed. They had been passed by many 
teams that day and most of the drivers 
had been urging tbeir horses to the full 
limit of their speed. 
“I understand now, why all those fel¬ 
lows were in such a hurry,” Norm said 
moodily. “We’d ought to have taken up 
our land while at the Land Office.” 
“Oh, I don’t know,” Nate demurred. 
“I’m thinking that creek land will be 
just about what we want.” 
“You wanted to file right there in the 
office and you know it,” Norm stormed. 
“I’ve changed my mind since then,” 
Nate retorted. “I think that creek land, 
will not be too Edenic. It’ll likely have 
some stones on it, and after travelling 
seven miles to get a piece of stony land, 
I’m not going to let a good chance slip. 
What do we care about the land anyway? 
It wasn’t really the land that we came 
after, but health and comradeship, so that 
we could go back, and do something in 
the East.” 
“Probably someone else has taken it 
before this,” but Norm hurried the oxen 
at a speed hitherto unknown to that faith¬ 
ful and steady-going pair. Arrived again 
at the creek side, the boys stopped a 
moment, listening to a cluster of men de¬ 
bating, judging from what they heard, 
the creek land was not taken. Norm 
drove on to it, drew out the nails that 
held the “coop,” on to the wagon, and 
then making a slip-plank of a couple of 
heavy boards, the two boys slid the shan¬ 
ty out on to the ground. 
“What are you doing here?” inquired 
an angry voice, and the speaker backed 
up by several other men, most of them 
mere boys like Nate and Norm, ap¬ 
proached them wi angry resistance 
written on their faces. “The creek is for 
everybody, and not for settlement.” 
“It might have seemed so a few min¬ 
utes ago,” Nate replied coolly, but now 
it belongs to us, and we’re going to hold 
it and homestead it.” 
CHAPTER IV. 
“You’ve only got one quarter section 
held with that shanty anyway,” a young 
and kindly voice put in. 
“Only one? Are we entitled to one 
quarter section each?” Nate turned 
swiftly and looked into the clear hazel 
eyes of Jim Maynard. “How can we 
know just where our land begins and 
where it ends?” 
“You can tell about where you are by 
the corner posts. At every corner of 
every section, the surveyors dig four 
holes and make a heap of dirt in the 
centre, often placing a stone on the heap. 
Here,” pointing to such a place, “is where 
my land ends, and yours begins. Tie a 
rag to your wagon wheel, and drive along 
and count the revolutions of your wheel, 
from one corner post to another, then 
you can easily tell where the line is be¬ 
tween two quarter sections almost any¬ 
where.” 
“Good!” cried Norm, brightening vis¬ 
ibly, and Nate knotted his handkerchief 
about a wheel. 
“If we hold a half section our joint 
land will run from one corner post to 
another and the line between the two 
quarters will be the dividing line between 
our two claims.” 
“Yes, and the land will run half a mile 
east and west. The creek right here is 
running north and south,” explained Jim. 
“You can shove your shanty over on to 
the line and hold both quarters, that 
wav till you can get your other one 
built.” 
This little, friendly encounter, cheered 
the boys a great deal, but both boys and 
oxen had put in the most strenuous day 
of their lives. But the bracing air, the 
glorious sleep, out under the open sky, 
caused them to -waken feeling refreshed 
and strengthened. 
“I feel like an inflated balloon,” Nate 
declared as he went about getting the 
simple breakfast. Then before the rest 
of the settlers were stirring, (most of 
whom were young men of their own age 
or a little more) Nate and Norm -were 
lumbering cityward with the best speed 
the oxen could make. 
The crowd at the Land Office thinned 
at noon, and Nate and Norm stationed 
themselves on the steps to wait for its 
re-opening after dinner. Mr. Stamford 
gave them a few extra minutes, and the 
boys explained the situation. 
“So you were crowded out? I was 
afraid of it. Men are so crazy for land, 
they file on any plat here, and then run 
for it. It isn’t a very good way or a 
just way, but that will be changed in 
years to come, but just now we must 
meet the problem as it is. There is no 
doubt the land unsurveyed and out of 
the market will be better than this land 
on the creek, but if you want this said 
land, there is no reason why you should 
not have it. Why not file on both a pre¬ 
emption and a homestead each ? This will 
give you a good square patch of land, and 
while some of it will be practically worth¬ 
less, some of it ought to yield good re¬ 
sults. The rough land will do for pastur¬ 
age.” 
And so, Nathan Lee, aged twenty-one, 
with a very slight margin over, became a 
land-holder, and upon the same date, 
Norman Duane, about the same age, 
profited by Uncle Sam’s beneficence. The 
boys paid their fees, bought some lumber 
and a few things they considered abso¬ 
lutely needful, and went lumbering home¬ 
ward. 
“It is funny,” said Nate viewing the 
plains, “how many buffalo bones there 
are out our way, and so few nearer the 
city.” 
“There isn’t anything funny about it,” 
Norm retorted. “Can’t you figure out 
two and two? The people who have set¬ 
tled on all these quarter sections have 
got rid of the bones, that’s all.” 
“I can’t see what they’ve done with 
them unless they’ve kept throwing them 
west, off their own land on to the next 
claim. I believe that is just what has 
been done, for they can’t burn them, and 
they won’t rot in years. Maybe,” Nate 
added pensively, “these bones have been 
piled up for me to use. Lacking stones, 
I can pick buffalo bones. They’re lighter 
and easier to handle, and enough to keep 
me busy for a long time.” 
“And that’s your idea of agriculture!” 
snorted Norm. 
“Doesn’t it make you feel plenty rich 
to own three hundred and twenty acres 
of land?” Nate added dreamily, ignor¬ 
ing Norm’s snort. 
“It does, and it does not,” admitted 
practical Norm. “You don’t seem to real¬ 
ize that we have to live on our home¬ 
steads five years, and that we have to 
pay about two hundred red-hot dollars 
for our pre-emptions when we prove up. 
My mind just now, strange as it may 
seem,” mockingly, “is bent upon the prob¬ 
lem of how we are going to live, and move 
and have our being, until our wheat crop 
begins to roll in.” 
“I’m afraid you’ve about used your 
nest egg up, haven’t you?” 
“Eggs don’t hatch just lying in a bas¬ 
ket. they’ve got to be set.” 
“I sure hope yours hatches,” observed 
Nate heartily, but after all I feel like 
a swine—letting you—” 
“Shut up,” responded Norm promptly. 
“It’s for better or worse, you know we 
agreed to that, when you let me come 
with you.” 
“Let you?” and there was great em¬ 
phasis and great meaning in Nate’s 
words. “I hope—but it’s an unequal 
partnership. You with your splendid 
strength, your nest egg, and me with—” 
“You with a cough—if you’d give up 
that bad habit, I wouldn’t ask much more 
of you—” 
“Oh. pass out your pledge—no, wait a 
little, I guess I’m going to break it right 
now,” and Nate began to cough violently. 
“There, you see, just mention it, and 
you begin. I notice you cough a lot more 
when you happen to think of it than 
when you are plum interested in other 
things.” 
“Maybe it’s so, I don’t cough nights 
now. I’m so interested in sleeping, and 
truly, this air is like breathing heaven— 
I’m bound to quit.” 
The boys lapsed into silence, both spec¬ 
ulating upon their land, its probable 
value, the experience before them, and 
the glory and the gladness of possession 
entered into their souls. 
“We’ll make good,” said Nate as they 
drove on to their own soil. 
“We’ll make good,” assented Norm. 
“And we’ll stand by each other forever.” 
It was mid-afternoon, when they 
reached home, and after tethering the 
oxen, feeding the few hens, and making 
things comfortable in general, both boys 
set to work to fix up the inside of the 
shanty. They made a bunk, and put it 
on hinges, for a sleeping place, and when 
this was not in use, it could be put up 
out of the way. Nate suggested a table 
on the same plan, so a broad shelf was 
put beneath a small window which they 
had inserted in the shanty, and this too 
proved a great convenience, for there was 
so little room, it must needs be carefully 
conserved. Some corner shelves were 
put across one corner, for the few dishes 
and nails were driven in beneath this, 
for hanging the skillets and utensils on, 
and so the little shack on the plains be¬ 
gan to look quite properly a bachelor’s 
shanty. 
“When do they plow and put in a 
crop?” inquired Nate innocently. 
“Y'ou are a practical agriculturist,” 
Norm laughed. “Out here they put a 
crop in, in the Spring, but back home, 
they sow a good deal of grain in the 
Fall.” 
“Well, I don’t see why not here too! 
Can’t we even begin to farm till next 
Spring?” Nate’s voice was full of dis¬ 
may and disappointment. 
“The Winters are too open here; the 
grain would freeze out, if put in in the 
Fall, if it wasn’t quite so late, we’d try 
putting in a few acres of flax, they raise 
the dandiest stuff on the virgin sod here! 
But it’s too late!” There was a ring of 
finality in Norm’s voice. 
And so the matter rested, but the next 
morning after the other work was done, 
Nate took up the topic, as though it had 
been dropped but a moment before. “But 
we’ve got to do something!” 
“We have. We have another house to 
build on the other half section of land, 
but before we do that we’ll look over our 
land some. I see we own a large round, 
basin of land; it must have been an 
old lake bed, with banks like the sides 
of a cup, and through this little valley 
runs the creek. This upland looks all 
right enough, but that valley land will 
be ricliern’ skim-milk, or I miss my 
guess.” 
The banks of the old lake were pre¬ 
cipitous, and the boys had to hunt for 
a place to make their descent into that 
part of their possessions. Finding the 
least steep place, they made the descent, 
rather more hurriedly than they had ex¬ 
pected to, for the top soil proved to be 
but a scale, and beneath it was nothing 
but loose, crumbling shale, that gave way 
with every step. Norm, heavy and less 
agile than Nate lost his footing and went 
rolling to the bottom, but Nate by ex¬ 
pert balancing, and light, skimming of 
the surface, reached the ground upright. 
Both boys laughed and laughed, and then 
Norm recovering his gravity, rolled about 
in the grass, long, thick, luxuriant. 
“My, but this grass is some wonder. 
If we had this back East we could make 
a little fortune cutting it for hay—but 
folks don’t put up much hay here, they 
say the stock range all Winter and come 
out fat in the Spring, feeding on the 
dry buffalo grass.” 
“If this bottom land is so good, what 
about the hillside? That crumbled away 
like clear lard, that must be an extra 
fine soil.” Nate observed, with an owl¬ 
like look of wisdom. 
“That,” snorted Norm. “There isn’t soil 
enough there to grow bird feed! That” 
and he gathered a handful of the shale 
and sifted it through his fingers, “That.” 
he repeated contemptuously. “I don’t 
know what on earth that stuff could be 
good for!” 
“ ‘Speak gently to the erring’,” Nate 
replied mildly, smliing at Norm’s scorn¬ 
ful denunciation of his judgment, and of 
the land judged. 
“I wonder if we couldn’t plow up just 
a little piece down here for a garden,” 
Norm speculated. “I believe these bluffs 
would protect it from frost, and the 
ground is so rich, things would grow like 
Jack’s beanstalk.” 
“You’d have to get the grass off some¬ 
way,” suggested Nate, wisely. 
“Oh, wise agriculturist!” cried Norm, 
“I’d cut the grass and plow the land,” 
then his exultation in his own superior 
wisdom oozed away. “But I haven’t any 
plow.” 
The boys had been moving along, and 
suddently around a sharp curve in the 
bank, Nate espied a monstrous heap of 
white. “Bones!” he cried. “Bones, 
bones everywhere and not a bone to 
pick!” but he bent to the pile and 
touched them with a feeling of half awe 
and reverence. “This is fairly uncanny! 
Norm! Did the buffaloes have a bury¬ 
ing ground here, or did they come here to 
jump off and commit suicide? There’s 
a carload of bones right here—I won¬ 
der—” But what Nate wondered remains 
a secret, for Norm broke in stormily. 
“The neighbors are using our valley- 
land for a dump heap,” and in verifica¬ 
tion of this statement, there came a 
shower of bones flying down the side of 
the embankment. 
“Hey there !” shouted Norm indignant¬ 
ly, but Nate’s hand shot out and shut 
off Norm’s vocalization. 
“Isn’t that Maynard? the fellow^ who 
was so good to us? and moreover lie’s got 
a shining red plow; I saw it. Tell him 
you’ll let him use your land to dump on, 
if he’ll lend you his plow !” 
“Hey!” shouted Norm, and in reply to 
the shout came an answering cry, and a 
pair of bright hazel eyes looked down 
upon them. 
“Hope my impromptu shower, didn’t 
hurt anyone,” said Jim Maynard’s boy¬ 
ish voice. 
“Not a bit,” Nate responded cordially. 
“We’ve just decided that we won’t kick 
on being used for a dump, if you let us 
take your plow for a little while.” 
“Why, you can take the plow and wel¬ 
come,” Jim replied heartily. “But it’s 
too late to plow anyway, and if you think 
of breaking up that valley, it’s all fool¬ 
ishness, for it’ll be covered with water 
likely sooner or later.” 
“It doen’t look much as though it had 
been under water for a good while,” 
Norm said, not very pleasantly, “but I 
want to turn up a little land for a gar¬ 
den.” 
Norm was prodding away with-a spade, 
turning up the blackest, richest kind of 
soil. “See that!” and Norm turned up 
another spadeful of soil. “It’s rich 
enough to raise pie crust on—if we could 
only get the seed.” 
“There’s no doubt about that, but pie- 
seed are scarce out here. It’s jolly fun 
baching it, but it’s jolly lonesome too. 
Say, I was in hopes one of you fellows 
would fetch out a piece of calico with 
you.” 
Both boys laughed. “No calico here. 
We’re all boys together ’round here, and 
it’s no fit place, for a woman just yet,” 
Jim continued. “But I’m homesick to 
see a gingham apron.” 
“I’ll get one, first time I go to the 
city,” Nate agreed accommodatingly, “and 
I’ll put up a clothes line, and keep it 
hanging out for the benefit of sore eyes.” 
And so with a laugh of good fellow¬ 
ship, Nate and Norm, made their way 
along the creek bed, to the road which 
lay just on the south line of their land, 
and then on up the hill there, where 
Norm got his oxen, and the plow, and all 
three boys set about making a garden 
patch. 
“This’ll be almost as good as a piece 
of calico,” Jim agreed, as he watched 
the oxen lumbering along and turning 
up the richest soil the sun had ever shone 
on. 
“I’ve got a dozen potatoes over to my 
shack, and a package of government gar¬ 
den seeds, which I will donate for the 
satisfaction of seeing this truck patch 
once in a while,” Jim volunteered gener¬ 
ously. 
“Dump all the bones you want to,” 
Nate replied hospitably, “and I’ll help 
you pick up too.” 
And so it chanced that lettuce and 
radishes, young turnips and string beans, 
beets and a few potatoes began to grow 
upon the virgin soil of the valley plat. 
Jim and Nate picked bones assiduously, 
and when Jim’s quarter section of land 
was picked clean, they both began on 
Nate’s land. “We’ll have that valley 
plum filled up,” Jim averred gaily. 
“I’m going to begin pounding them up 
for our six- hens,” Nate said happily. 
“They’re prime good for hens, and ours 
are laying now. We’re going to set one 
just as quick as we can.” 
That night after the dishes were 
washed Nate began making poultry feed 
out of the bones. lie used a big stone, 
for a base and with a smaller one he 
pounded the dry bones up into scraps, 
and although it was time for any re¬ 
spectable fowl to be to sleep, the six 
flocked about him, picking up the falling 
spray. And as Nate watched how greed¬ 
ily the hens ate the bone scraps an idea, 
dim, vague, came into his mind, and he 
wondered vaguely if there were such a 
thing as a bone-cutter, and finally dis¬ 
patched an inquiry for a catalogue of 
poultry supplies. 
“Terribly rough, homely horns, these 
buffalo horns!” Jim essayed one day pick¬ 
ing up a monster pair that lay near. 
“I supposed horns grew as smooth as 
glass,” Nate exposed his ignorance shame¬ 
lessly. “I’ve seen whole windows full of 
horns in the city, as shiny as looking 
glasses.” 
“Huh! City horns are polished up like 
city people, and don’t look any more like 
natural horns, than dudes do like men,” 
Jim aired his superior wisdom freely. 
“I wonder what color these horns real¬ 
ly are,” and Nate took out his jack knife 
and began cutting away the outer rough¬ 
ness. 
“We could find out easy enough by try¬ 
ing one on the grindstone. If you want 
to scrub up some, we’ll take them up and 
find out.” 
“Let’s do it. We can fix up a pair 
apiece and keep them to hand down in 
years to come.” 
So at noon, the rough buffalo horns 
were tried upon the grindstone and much 
of the rough, checked, outer covering was 
ground off, revealing a horn as black as 
ebony, and about as hord. 
“I believe they would polish up in 
great shape; we’ll fix some to hang our 
hats on.” 
“They’ll need scraping with glass, and 
rubbing with emery paper and rotten 
stone and oil, to put a final finish on 
them,” Jim agreed. “I’ve got about all 
the junk in my shack that I want, but 
I’ll help you fix some.” 
And so the remainder of the Summer 
drifted by. All the young settlers were 
busy, without accomplishing anything 
that turned into real money, and money 
seemed to be a very vital part of life in 
a new country, where everything was 
high and luxuries scarce. Nate and Norm 
had built the other shanty and had fitted 
it out reasonably, but both knew that 
their resources for the long Winter were 
pitiably inadequate. It is true that Nate 
had picked bones and fed the hens boun¬ 
tifully, that these same bens were laying 
well, and furnishing as many eggs as six 
hens could be expected to do, but they 
could not furnish a living for two hungry 
boys. Nate had, been thinking seriously 
for a long time, wondering, what he could 
do to add to their financial exchequer. 
He knew that the buffalo bones would be 
an asset, if they could be shipped to 
some fertilizing plant. The nearest rail¬ 
road was 20 miles away, so that shipping 
seemed hardly feasible just then, but he 
hoped sometime to utilize those bones, 
although this had not occurred to him at. 
first, and he meant, should lie realize any 
profit from them to share with Jim May¬ 
nard, for he had worked as hard as Nate 
had. to pick them up. Still the clearing 
of the land had been the chief, and only 
object to Jim, while to Nate, the keep¬ 
ing out of doors, in the clean, dry air, 
was the main thing. To be in a pleas¬ 
ant companionship, and to be occupied 
in a light way, meant a good deal, for 
it kept both boys from dullness, and 
Jim perhaps from homesickness. 
