He rambled in a wavering loop, and diving eccentrically at Cumnor,
clashed the milk-cans together. “‘Es schallt ein Ruf wie Donnerhall,’”
he bawled, beginning the song of “Die Wacht am Rhein.” “Why don’t you
dance?” he shouted sternly. The boy saw the terrible earnestness of
his face, and, clashing his milk-cans in turn, he shuffled a sort of
jig. The two went over the sand in loops, toe and heel; the donkey
continued his quiet grazing, and the flames rose hot and yellow from
the freight-wagon. And all the while the stately German hymn pealed
among the rocks, and the Apaches crept down nearer the bowing, scraping
men. The sun shone bright, and their bodies poured with sweat. Jones
flung off his shirt; his damp, matted hair was half in ridges and
half glued to his forehead, and the delicate gold chain swung and
struck his broad, naked breast. The Apaches drew nearer again, their
bows and arrows held uncertainly. They came down the hill, fifteen or
twenty, taking a long time, and stopping every few yards. The milk-cans
clashed, and Jones thought he felt the boy’s strokes weakening. “Die
Wacht am Rhein” was finished, and now it was “‘Ha-ve you seen my Flora
pass this way?’” “Y’u mustn’t play out, kid,” said Jones, very gently.
“Indeed y’u mustn’t”; and he at once resumed his song. The silent
Apaches had now reached the bottom of the hill. They stood some twenty
yards away, and Cumnor had a good chance to see his first Indians. He
saw them move, and the color and slim shape of their bodies, their thin
arms, and their long black hair. It went through his mind that if he
had no more clothes on than that, dancing would come easier. His boots
were growing heavy to lift, and his overalls seemed to wrap his sinews
in wet, strangling thongs. He wondered how long he had been keeping
this up. The legs of the Apaches were free, with light moccasins only
half-way to the thigh, slenderly held up by strings from the waist.
Cumnor envied their unencumbered steps as he saw them again walk nearer
to where he was dancing. It was long since he had eaten, and he noticed
a singing dulness in his brain, and became frightened at his thoughts,
which were running and melting into one fixed idea. This idea was to
take off his boots, and offer to trade them for a pair of moccasins.
It terrified him--this endless, molten rush of thoughts; he could see
them coming in different shapes from different places in his head, but
they all joined immediately, and always formed the same fixed idea. He
ground his teeth to master this encroaching inebriation of his will
and judgment. He clashed his can more loudly to wake him to reality,
which he still could recognize and appreciate. For a time he found it
a good plan to listen to what Specimen Jones was singing, and tell
himself the name of the song, if he knew it. At present it was “Yankee
Doodle,” to which Jones was fitting words of his own. These ran, “Now
I’m going to try a bluff, And mind you do what I do”; and then again,
over and over. Cumnor waited for the word “bluff”; for it was hard and
heavy, and fell into his thoughts, and stopped them for a moment. The
dance was so long now he had forgotten about that. A numbness had been
spreading through his legs, and he was glad to feel a sharp pain in
the sole of his foot. It was a piece of gravel that had somehow worked
its way in, and was rubbing through the skin into the flesh. “That’s
good,” he said, aloud. The pebble was eating the numbness away, and
Cumnor drove it hard against the raw spot, and relished the tonic of
its burning friction. The Apaches had drawn into a circle. Standing at
some interval apart, they entirely surrounded the arena. Shrewd, half
convinced, and yet with awe, they watched the dancers, who clashed
their cans slowly now in rhythm to Jones’s hoarse, parched singing. He
was quite master of himself, and led the jig round the still blazing
wreck of the wagon, and circled in figures of eight between the corpses
of the Mexicans, clashing the milk-cans above each one. Then, knowing
his strength was coming to an end, he approached an Indian whose
splendid fillet and trappings denoted him of consequence; and Jones was
near shouting with relief when the Indian shrank backward. Suddenly
he saw Cumnor let his can drop, and without stopping to see why, he
caught it up, and, slowly rattling both, approached each Indian in
turn with tortuous steps. The circle that had never uttered a sound
till now receded, chanting almost in a whisper some exorcising song
which the man with the fillet had begun. They gathered round him,
retreating always, and the strain, with its rapid muttered words, rose
and fell softly among them. Jones had supposed the boy was overcome by
faintness, and looked to see where he lay. But it was not faintness.
Cumnor, with his boots off, came by and walked after the Indians in a
trance. They saw him, and quickened their pace, often turning to be
sure he was not overtaking them. He called to them unintelligibly,
stumbling up the sharp hill, and pointing to the boots. Finally he sat
down. They continued ascending the mountain, herding close round the
man with the feathers, until the rocks and the filmy tangles screened
them from sight; and like a wind that hums uncertainly in grass, their
chanting died away.
The sun was half behind the western range when Jones next moved. He
called, and, getting no answer, he crawled painfully to where the boy
lay on the hill. Cumnor was sleeping heavily; his head was hot, and he
moaned. So Jones crawled down, and fetched blankets and the canteen of
water. He spread the blankets over the boy, wet a handkerchief and laid
it on his forehead; then he lay down himself.
The earth was again magically smitten to crystal. Again the sharp
cactus and the sand turned beautiful, and violet floated among the
mountains, and rose-colored orange in the sky above them.
“Jock,” said Specimen at length.
The boy opened his eyes.
“Your foot is awful, Jock. Can y’u eat?”
“Not with my foot.”
“Ah, God bless y’u, Jock! Y’u ain’t turruble sick. But can y’u eat?”
Cumnor shook his head.
“Eatin’s what y’u need, though. Well, here.” Specimen poured a
judicious mixture of whiskey and water down the boy’s throat, and
wrapped the awful foot in his own flannel shirt. “They’ll fix y’u over
to Grant. It’s maybe twelve miles through the cañon. It ain’t a town
any more than Carlos is, but the soldiers’ll be good to us. As soon as
night comes you and me must somehow git out of this.”
Somehow they did, Jones walking and leading his horse and the
imperturbable little burro, and also holding Cumnor in the saddle.
And when Cumnor was getting well in the military hospital at Grant,
he listened to Jones recounting to all that chose to hear how useful
a weapon an ice-cream freezer can be, and how if you’ll only chase
Apaches in your stocking feet they are sure to run away. And then
Jones and Cumnor both enlisted; and I suppose Jones’s friend is still
expecting him in Tucson.
THE LAND OF THE STRADDLE-BUG
HAMLIN GARLAND
Dakota, 1883
From “The Moccasin Ranch.” Reprinted by permission of the author and
of Harper and Brothers, New York.[29]
I
Early in the gray and red dawn of a March morning in 1883, two wagons
moved slowly out of Boomtown, the two-year-old “giant of the plains.”
As the teams drew past the last house, the strangeness of the scene
appealed irresistibly to the newly arrived immigrants. The town lay
behind them on the level, treeless plain like a handful of blocks
pitched upon a russet robe. Its houses were mainly shanties of pine,
one story in height, while here and there actual tents gleamed in the
half-light with infinite suggestion of America’s restless pioneers.
The wind blew fresh and chill from the west. The sun rose swiftly, and
the thin scarf of morning cloud melted away, leaving an illimitable
sweep of sky arching an almost equally majestic plain. There was a
poignant charm in the air--a smell of freshly uncovered sod, a width
and splendor in the view which exalted the movers beyond words.
The prairie was ridged here and there with ice, and the swales were
full of posh and water. Geese were slowly winging their way against the
wind, and ducks were sitting here and there on the ice-rimmed ponds.
The sod was burned black and bare, and so firm with frost that the
wagon chuckled noisily as it passed over it. The whistle of the driver
called afar, startling the ducks from their all-night resting-places.
One of the teams drew a load of material for a house, together with
a few household utensils. The driver, a thin-faced, blue-eyed man of
thirty, walked beside his horses. His eyes were full of wonder, but he
walked in silence.
The second wagon was piled high with boxes and barrels of groceries and
hardware, and was driven by a handsome young fellow with a large brown
mustache. His name was Bailey, and he seemed to be pointing the way for
his companion, whom he called Burke.
As the sun rose, a kind of transformation-scene took place. The whole
level land lifted at the horizon till the teams seemed crawling
forever at bottom of an enormous bowl. Mystical forms came into
view--grotesquely elongated, unrecognizable. Hills twenty, thirty miles
away rose like apparitions, astonishingly magnified. Willows became
elms, a settler’s shanty rose like a shot-tower--towns hitherto unseen
swam and palpitated in the yellow flood of light like shaken banners
low-hung on unseen flagstaffs.
Burke marched with uplifted face. He was like one suddenly wakened in
a new world, where nothing was familiar. Not a tree or shrub was in
sight. Not a mark of plough or harrow--everything was wild, and to him
mystical and glorious. His eyes were like those of a man who sees a
world at its birth.
Hour after hour they moved across the swelling land. Hour after hour,
while the yellow sun rolled up the slope, putting to flight the morning
shapes on the horizon--striking the plain into level prose again, and
warming the air into genial March. Hour after hour the horses toiled on
till the last cabin fell away to the east, like a sail at sea, till the
road faded into a trail almost imperceptible on the firm sod.
And so at last they came to the land of “the straddle-bug”--the
squatters’ watch dog--three boards nailed together (like a stack of
army muskets) to mark a claim. Burke resembled a man taking his first
sea-voyage. His eyes searched the plain restlessly, and his brain
dreamed. Bailey, an old settler--of two years’ experience--whistled and
sang and shouted lustily to his tired beasts.
It drew toward noon. Bailey’s clear voice shouted back, “When we reach
that swell we’ll see the Western Coteaux.” The Western Coteaux! To
Burke, the man from Illinois, this was like discovering a new range of
mountains.
“There they rise,” Bailey called, a little later.
Burke looked away to the west. Low down on the horizon lay a long, blue
bank, hardly more substantial than a line of cloud. “How far off are
they?” he asked, in awe.
“About twenty-five miles. Our claims are just about in line with that
gap.” Bailey pointed with his whip. “And about twelve miles from here.
We’re on the unsurveyed land now.”
Burke experienced a thrill of exultation as he looked around him. In
the distance, other carriages were crawling like beetles. A couple of
shanties, newly built on a near-by ridge, glittered like gold in the
sun, and the piles of yellow lumber and the straddle-bugs increased in
number as they left the surveyed land and emerged into the finer tract
which lay as yet unmapped. At noon they stopped and fed their animals,
eating their own food on the ground beside their wagons.
While they rested, Bailey kept his eyes on their backward trail,
watching for his partner, Rivers. “It’s about time Jim showed up,” he
said, once again.
Burke seemed anxious. “They won’t get off the track, will they?”
Bailey laughed at his innocence. “Jim Rivers has located about
seventy-five claims out here this spring. I guess he won’t lose his
bearings.”
“I’m afraid Blanche’ll get nervous.”
“Oh, Jim will take care of her. She won’t be lonesome, either. He’s a
great favorite with the women, always gassin’--Well, this won’t feed
the baby,” he ended, leaping to his feet.
They were about to start on when a swift team came into sight. The
carriage was a platform-spring wagon, with a man and woman in the front
seat, and in the rear a couple of alert young fellows sat holding
rifles in their hands and eyeing the plain for game.
“Hello!” said the driver, in a pleasant shout. “How you getting on?”
“Pretty well,” replied Bailey.
“Should say you were. I didn’t know but we’d fail to overhaul you.”
Burke went up to the wagon. “Well, Blanche, what do you think of
it--far’s you’ve got?”
“Not very much,” replied his wife, candidly. She was a handsome woman,
but looked tired and a little cross, at the moment. “I guess I’ll get
out and ride with you,” she added.
“Why, no! What for?” asked Rivers, hastily. “Why not go right along out
to the store with us?”
“Why, yes; that’s the thing to do, Blanche. We’ll be along soon,” said
Burke. “Stay where you are.”
She sat down again, as if ashamed to give her reason for not going on
with these strange men.
“I was just in the middle of a story, too,” added Rivers, humorously.
“Well, so long.” And, cracking his whip, he started on. “We’ll have
supper ready when you arrive!” he shouted back.
Burke could not forget the look in his wife’s eyes. She was right. It
would have been pleasanter if she had stayed with him. They had been
married several years, but his love for her had not grown less. Perhaps
for the reason that she dominated him.
She was a fine, powerful girl, while he was a plain man, slightly
stooping, with thin face and prominent larynx. She had brought a little
property to him, which was unusual enough to give her a sense of
importance in all business transactions of the firm.
She had consented to the sale of their farm in Illinois with great
reluctance, and, as Burke rode along on his load of furniture, he
recalled it all very vividly, and it made him anxious to know her
impression of his claim. As he took her position for a moment, he got
a sudden sense of the loneliness and rawness of this new land which he
had not felt before. The woman’s point of view was so different from
that of the adventurous man.
Twice they were forced to partly unload in order to cross ravines where
the frost had fallen out, and it was growing dark as they rose over
the low swell, from which they could see a dim, red star, which Burke
guessed to be the shanty light, even before Bailey called, exultantly:
“There she blows!”
The wind had grown chill and moist, the quacking ducks were thickening
on the pools, and strange noises came from ghostly swells and hidden
creeks. The tired horses moved forward with soundless feet upon the
sod, which had softened during the day. They quickened their steps when
they saw the lantern shine from the pole before the building.
The light of the lamp, and the sight of Blanche standing in the doorway
of the cabin at the back of the store-room, was a beautiful sight to
Burke. Set over against the wet, dark prairie, with its boundless sweep
of unknown soil, the shanty seemed a radiant palace.
“Supper’s all ready, Willard!” called Blanche, and the tired man’s
heart leaped with joy to hear the tender, familiar cadence of her
voice. It was her happy voice, and when she used it men were her slaves.
Bailey came out with one of the land-seekers.
“Go in to supper, boys; we’ll take care of the teams,” was his hearty
command.
The tired freighters gladly did as they were bid, and, scooping up some
water from a near-by hollow on the sod, hurriedly washed their faces
and sat down to a supper of chopped potatoes, bacon and eggs, and tea
(which Blanche placed steaming hot upon the table), and in such joy as
only the weary worker knows.
Mrs. Burke was in high spirits. The novelty of the trip, the rude
shanty, with its litter of shavings, and its boxes for chairs, the
bundles of hay for beds, gave her something like the same pleasure a
picnic might have done. It appealed to the primeval in her. She forgot
her homesickness and her vague regrets, and her smiles filled her
husband with content.
Rivers and the others soon came in, and after supper there was a great
deal of energetic talk. The young land-seekers were garrulous with
delight over their claims, which they proudly exalted above the stumps
and stones of the farms “back home.”
“Why, it took three generations of my folks to clear off forty acres of
land,” said one of them. “They just wore themselves out on it. I told
Hank he could have it, and I’d go West and see if there wasn’t some
land out there which wouldn’t take a man’s lifetime to grub out and
smooth down. And I’ve found it.”
Rivers had plainly won the friendship of Mrs. Burke, for they were
having a jolly time together over by the table, where he was helping to
wash the dishes. He had laughing, brown eyes, and a pleasant voice, and
was one of the most popular of the lawyers and land-agents in Boomtown.
There was a boyish quality in him which kept him giving and taking
jocular remarks.
Bailey sometimes said: “Rivers would shine up to a seventy-year-old
Sioux squaw if she was the only woman handy, but he don’t mean anything
by it--it’s just his way. He’s one o’ the best-hearted fellers that
ever lived.” Others took a less favorable view of the land-agent, and
refused to trust him.
Bailey assumed command. “Now, fellers,” he said, “we’ll vamoose the
ranch while Mrs. Burke turns in.” He opened the way to the store-room,
and the men filed out, all but Burke, who remained to put up the calico
curtain with which his wife had planned to shield her bed.
Blanche was a little disturbed at the prospect of sleeping behind such
a thin barrier.
“Oh, it’s no worse than the sleeping-car,” her husband argued.
A little later he stuck his head in at the store-room door. “All ready,
Bailey.”
Bailey was to sleep on the rickety lounge, which served as bedstead and
chair, and the other men were to make down as best they could in the
grocery.
Bailey went out to the front of the shanty to look at the lantern he
had set up on a scantling. Rivers followed him.
“Going to leave that up there all night?”
“Yes. May keep some poor devil from wandering around all night on the
prairie.”
Rivers said, with an abrupt change in his voice:
“Mrs. Burke is a hummer, isn’t she? How’d his flat-chested nibs manage
to secure a ‘queen’ like that? I must get married, Bailey--no use.”
Bailey took his friend’s declaration more lightly than it deserved. He
laughed. “Wish you would, Jim, and relieve me of the cookin’.”
Blanche could hardly compose herself to sleep. “Isn’t it wonderful,”
she whispered. “It’s all so strange, like being out of the world,
someway.”
Burke heard the ducks quacking down in the “Moggason”, and he, too,
_felt_ the silence and immensity of the plain outside. It was enormous,
incredible in its wildness. “I believe we’re going to like it out here,
Blanche,” he said.
Blanche Burke rose to a beautiful and busy day. The breakfast which
she cooked in the early dawn was savory, and Rivers, who helped her by
bringing water and building the fire, was full of life and humor. He
seemed to have no other business than to “wait and tend” on her.
He called her out to see the sunrise. “Isn’t this great!” he called,
exultantly. Flights of geese were passing, and the noise of ducks came
to them from every direction. He pointed out the distant hills, and
called her attention to a solemn row of sand-hill cranes down by the
swale, causing her to see the wonder and beauty of this new world.
“You’re going to like it out here,” he said, with conviction. “It is a
glorious climate, and you’ll soon have more neighbors than you want.”
After breakfast Bailey and Burke left the “Moggason Ranch”--as Bailey
called the store and shanty--to carry the lumber and furniture
belonging to Burke on to his claim, two or three miles away. Rivers
remained to work in the store, and to meet some other land-seekers, and
Mrs. Burke agreed to stay and get dinner for them all.
During this long forenoon, Rivers exerted himself to prevent her from
being lonely. He was busy about the store, but he found time to keep
her fire going and to bring water and to tell her of his bachelor life
with Bailey. She had never had anything like this swift and smiling
service, and she felt very grateful to him. He encouraged her to make
some pies and to prepare a “thumping dinner.” “It will seem like being
married again,” he said, with a chuckle.
Burke and Bailey returned at noon to dinner.
“Mrs. Burke, you can sleep in your own ranch to-night,” announced
Bailey.
“I guess it will be a ranch.”
“It’ll be new, anyhow,” her husband said, with a timid smile.
After dinner she straightened things up a little, and as she got into
the wagon she said: “Well, there, Mr. Rivers. _You’ll_ have to take
care o’ things now.”
Rivers leered comically, sighed, and looked at his partner. “Bailey, I
didn’t know what we needed before; I know now. We need a woman.”
Bailey smiled. “Go get one. Don’t ask a clumsy old farmer like me to
provide a cook.”
“I’ll get married to-morrow,” said Rivers, with a droll inflection.
They all laughed, and Burke clucked at the team. “Well, good-bye, boys;
see you later.”
After leaving the ranch they struck out over the prairie where no
wagon-wheel but theirs had ever passed. Here were the buffalo trails,
deep-worn ruts all running from northwest to southeast. Here lay the
white bones of elk in shining crates, ghastly on the fire-blackened
sod. Beside the shallow pools, buffalo horns, in testimony of the
tragic past, lay scattered thickly. Everywhere could be seen the signs
of the swarming herds of bison which once swept to and fro from north
to south over the plain, all so silent and empty now.
A few antelope scurried away out of the path, and a wolf sitting on a
height gravely watched the teams as if marvelling at their coming. The
wind swept out of the west clear and cold. The sky held no shred of
cloud. The air was like some all-powerful intoxicant, and when Bailey
pointed out a row of little stakes and said, “There’s the railroad,”
their imagination supplied the trains, the wheat, the houses, the towns
which were to come.
At the claim Blanche sat on a box and watched the two men as they
swiftly built the little cabin which was to be her home. Their hammers
rang merrily, and soon she was permitted to go inside and look up at
the great sky which roofed it in. This was an emotional moment to her.
As she sat there listening to the voices of the men who were drawing
this fragile shelter around her, a great awe fell upon her. It seemed
as if she had drawn a little nearer to the Almighty Creator of the
universe. Here, where no white man had ever set foot, she was watching
the founding of her own house. Was it a home? Could it ever be a home?
Swiftly the roof closed over her head, and the floor crept under her
feet. The stove came in, and the flour-barrel, and the few household
articles which they had brought followed, and as the sun was setting
they all sat down to supper in her new home.
The smell of the fresh pine was round them. Geese were flying over.
Cranes were dancing down by the ponds, prairie-chickens were _booming_.
The open doorway--doorless yet--looked out on the sea-like plain
glorified by the red sun just sinking over the purple line of treeless
hills to the west. It was the bare, raw materials of a State, and they
were in at the beginning of it.
After Bailey left them the husband and wife sat in silence. When they
spoke it was in low voices. It seemed as if God could hear what they
said--that He was just there behind the glory of the western clouds.
II
Day by day the plain thickened with life. Each noon a crowd of
land-seekers swarmed about the Moggason Ranch asking for food and
shelter, and Blanche, responding to Rivers’ entreaties, went down to
cook, returning each night to her bed. Rivers professed to be very
grateful for her aid.
All ages and sexes came to take claims. Old men, alone and feeble,
school-teachers from the East, young girls from the towns of the older
counties, boys not yet of age--everywhere incoming claimants were
setting stakes upon the green and beautiful sod.
Each day the grass grew more velvety green. Each day the sky waxed
warmer. The snow disappeared from the ravines. The ice broke up on
the Moggason. The ponds disappeared. Plover flew over with wailing
cry. Buffalo birds, prairie pigeons, larks, blackbirds, sparrows,
joined their voices to those of the cranes and geese and ducks, and
the prairie piped and twittered and clacked and chuckled with life.
The gophers emerged from their winter quarters, the foxes barked on
the hills, the skunk hobbled along the ravines, and the badger raised
mounds of fresh soil as if to aid the boomer by showing how deep the
black loam was.
Everybody was in holiday mood. Men whistled and sang and shouted and
toiled--toiled terribly--and yet it did not seem like toil! They sank
wells and ploughed gardens and built barns and planted seeds, and yet
the whole settlement continued to present the care-free manners of
a great pleasure party. It seemed as if no one needed to work, and,
therefore, those first months were months of gay and swift progress.
It was the most beautiful spring Blanche and Willard Burke had spent
since their marriage nine years before. Blanche forgot to be petulant
or moody. She was in superb health, and carried herself like a girl of
eighteen. She appeared to have lost all her regrets.
She laughed heartily when Rivers came over one afternoon and boldly
declared:
“Burke, I’ve c’me to borrow your wife. We’ve got a lot o’ tenderfoots
over there to-night, and I’m a little shy of Bailey’s biscuits. I’m
going to carry your cook away.”
“All right; only bring her back.”
Blanche was a little embarrassed when Rivers replied: “I don’t like to
agree to do that. Mebbe you’d better come over to make sure I do.”
“All right. I’ll come over in time for supper.” Burke’s simple, good
face glowed with enjoyment of the fun. He smilingly went back to
beating his ploughshare with hammer and wedge as Rivers drove away
with Blanche. The clink of his steel rang through the golden light that
flooded the prairie, keeping time to his whistled song.
In the months of April and May the world sent a skirmish-line into this
echoless land to take possession of a belt of territory six hundred
miles long and one hundred miles broad. The settlers came like locusts;
they sang like larks. From Alsace and Lorraine, from the North Sea,
from Russia, from the Alps, they came, and their faces shone as if they
had happened upon the spring-time of the world. Tyranny was behind
them, the majesty of God’s wilderness before them, a mystic joy within
them.
Under their hands the straddle-bug multiplied. He is short-lived, this
prairie insect. He usually dies in thirty days--by courtesy alone he
lives. He expresses the settlers’ hope and sense of justice. In these
spring days of good cheer he lived at times to sixty days--but only on
stony ground or fire-scarred, peaty lowlands.
He withered--this strange, three-legged, voiceless insect--but in his
stead arose a beetle. This beetle sheltered human beings, and was
called a shack.
They were all alike, these shacks. They had roofs of one slant. They
were built of rough lumber, and roofed with tarred paper, which made
all food taste of tar.
They were dens but little higher than a man’s head, and yet they
sheltered the most joyous people that ever set foot to earth. In one
cabin lived a girl and a canary-bird, all alone. In the next a man who
cooked his own food when he did not share his rations with the girl,
all in frank and honorable companionship. On the next claim were two
school-teachers, busy as magpies, using the saw and hammer with deft
accuracy. In the next was a bank-clerk out for his health--and these
clean and self-contained people lived in free intercourse without
slander and without fear. Only the Alsatians settled in groups, alien
and unapproachable. All others met at odd times and places, breathing
in the promiseful air of the clean sod, resolute to put the world of
hopeless failure behind them.
Spring merged magnificently into summer. The grass upthrust. The
water-fowl passed on to the northern lake-region. The morning symphony
of the prairie-chickens died out, but the whistle of the larks, the
chatter of the sparrows, and the wailing cry of the nestling plover
came to take its place.
The gophers whistled and trilled, the foxes barked from the hills, and
an occasional startled antelope or curious wolf passed through the line
of settlement as if to see what lay behind this strange phalanx of
ploughmen guarding their yellow shanties.