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[Illustration]
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Hiking Westward
Being the Story of Two Boys Whose Ambition
Led Them to Face Privations and Hardships
in Their Quest of a Home in the Great West
By
ROGER W. CONANT
ILLUSTRATED BY
FRANK T. MERRILL
W. A. WILDE COMPANY
BOSTON—CHICAGO
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Copyrighted, 1920,
By W. A. Wilde Company
All rights reserved
Hiking Westward
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FOREWORD
HIKING WESTWARD is really a chapter taken out of the lives of two
wide-awake American boys who go West to make a home for their mother.
Although ignorant of the conditions of frontier life, Phil and Ted
Porter meet them manfully. They face their difficulties with a smile,
work like Trojans on their quarter section and through the love which
they bear their mother, as shown in their every act, they win the
respect of the kind-hearted, but rough settlers: people who do things:
to whom setbacks and difficulties are daily occurrences. Success crowned
their efforts, developing a sturdy self-reliance and an ingenuity in
surmounting the many obstacles which confronted them.
Originally this story appeared under the title of “The Young
Homesteaders”, by J. W. Lincoln—my pen name, but the edition was quickly
withdrawn and now, over my own name and with corrections and revisions,
I desire to place it in the hands of all the boys I can as a true
picture of early pioneer days.
Roger W. Conant.
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CONTENTS
I Solving a Problem
II Temptation
III Electing a Captain
IV A Pleasant Surprise
V Timely Assistance
VI Boarding the Admiral
VII Anxious Moments
VIII The Boys Prove Their Metal
IX A Series of Revelations
X The Unusual Postman
XI Up the Saint Mary’s River
XII Shooting the Rapids
XIII Through onto Superior
XIV A Night in the Fog
XV Entrained
XVI A Night Alarm
XVII Receiving Pointers
XVIII The Boys Find a Friend
XIX A Close Call
XX In the Lumber Camp
XXI More Good Luck
XXII On the Claim
XXIII “Bears!”
XXIV Outfitting
XXV A Day of Trials
XXVI An Echo from the Past
XXVII Building an Irrigation Plant
XXVIII A Terrible Experience
XXIX Ted Makes a Discovery
XXX Series of Unpleasant Surprises
XXXI The Fire Lookout
XXXII An Unexpected Arrival
XXXIII Fighting for Their Home
XXXIV The Girls Make Friends
XXXV At Work in Earnest
XXXVI Chester Brings News
XXXVII Word from Washington
XXXVIII The House-Raising
XXXIX A Fortunate Discovery
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Hiking Westward
CHAPTER I
SOLVING A PROBLEM
“Phil, what should you and Ted do if you were suddenly called upon to
support your sisters and me?” asked Mrs. Porter, as her family were
finishing their supper.
“Play ball,” declared Phil.
“Be an aviator,” announced his brother.
“You might have known what their answers would be, Momsy, without
asking,” exclaimed Sallie, with disgust. “Ever since Phil was elected
captain of his school nine all he can think of is ‘play ball.’”
“Yes, and Ted’s just as absorbed in that old machine he is building—as
if he could build anything that would fly,” interposed Margie.
“I tell you it can fly, Miss Smarty. It rose more than a foot from the
ground and kept up for its whole length last week,” retorted Ted.
“That wasn’t flying, it was the shock caused by my lending you my week’s
allowance,” retaliated Margie.
“You said you wouldn’t mention that, and anyway, I didn’t promise to pay
it back until next month.”
“I’m sorry, Ted. That slipped out without my thinking. Do you suppose
your machine would fly twice its length if I loaned you this week’s
money?”
“Goody, sis, will you?”
“Don’t you do it, Marg,” warned her older sister. “Momsy, you ought to
forbid Ted’s throwing away all his and Margie’s money on that crazy old
airship.”
“I haven’t asked _you_ for any, have I?” demanded Ted, his cheeks
flushing.
“Good reason why—you know I wouldn’t lend you any.”
“You can turn up your nose all you like, but you’ll change your tune
when you see me flying about.”
“I shall be so old my eyesight will be gone when you do.”
“Never you—” began Ted, only to be interrupted by his mother.
“There, there, son, don’t get so excited. It is all right for you to
spend your own time and money on your flying machine, if you wish, but
you must not borrow from Margie.”
“Now don’t scold Ted, Momsy,” broke in the younger girl. “I really owe
him something because he helped me to pass my algebra exam.”
“Besides, I said I would pay her back next month—and I will.”
“All right, but I forbid you to ask Margie again. I think, too, it would
be just as well if you all saved your allowances from now on—there is no
knowing how soon they will stop entirely,” added Mrs. Porter, seriously.
At this statement, the boys looked blankly at their sisters, then at
their mother, and as they searched her face, they noticed how unusually
wan and frail she appeared.
“Why, Momsy, how tired you look!” exclaimed Phil.
“I am, son,—and ill. The doctor says I may,” and her voice quavered, “I
may be obliged to give up my work and take a long rest.”
In shocked surprise, her sons and daughters heard her words, for, though
they loved their mother dearly, with the carelessness of youth, they had
failed to note the increasing look of weariness that was furrowing her
face with lines.
“If Dr. Blair says you ought to take a rest, you shall,” declared Ted.
“Yet I can’t unless you and Phil are able to take my place as
breadwinner, and flying and playing ball do not seem to be very reliable
occupations.”
“We didn’t mean that; at least, I didn’t,” protested Phil, hastily.
“Nor I,” his brother quickly confirmed.
“Then what would you do?”
An instant Phil looked at his brother, who nodded, then replied:
“We’d take up a free homestead out West and raise wheat.”
So utterly different from anything they had expected was this
announcement that Mrs. Porter and her daughters simply sat in silence.
Confronted with the necessity of bringing up four young children with
only a small life insurance as a basis, the mother had courageously set
about the task.
Artistic by nature, through the aid of friends, she obtained a
responsible and remunerative position with a large department store
which had enabled her to make their home in Weston comfortable and
attractive, even, indeed, through the strictest economy, to save a few
hundred dollars—but the effort had been at the expense of her strength
and health.
“A lot you kids know about farming,” exclaimed Margie, the first to
recover from her surprise.
“Or about anything else that’s practical,” retorted Phil. “But we can
learn—and there’s a better living to be made from a farm, say out in
Washington State, even the first year, than we could provide you in the
city in five.”
“You think you would be happy to leave Weston, with your amusements and
all your friends?” quietly asked Mrs. Porter.
“We know we should be,” asserted Phil. “Why, Jack Howell told us it took
all the money he could earn just to buy his clothes and go round—and he
receives twenty dollars a week. So how could we take care of you and the
girls, too, even if we were able to get that much?”
“Which we wouldn’t be,” promptly declared Ted. “If a fellow can get ten
dollars a week when he starts in, he is lucky. I know, because I’ve been
trying to find a place where I could earn some money to put into my
flying machine.”
“Why go way out to Washington?” inquired Sallie. “If you are set on
going in for farming, there must be no end of places nearer where you
could do as well.”
“If we had the money,” returned Phil. “As we haven’t, the thing for us
to do is to take up some of the land that is given away by the
government to settlers, and there is none easier to clear than in
Washington. Oh, we know,” he added, forestalling the exceptions he knew
his sister would take to this statement, “because Ted and I have been
looking it up.”
“I thought lumber was the chief product of Washington,” declared Margie,
cocking her head on one side, as though she were obtaining a mental
picture of the products of that State as they were printed in her
geography.
“So it is, but there are thousands of acres which are particularly
adapted to wheat; that is, the climate is, and the soil is fertile,”
replied Ted.
“But there are bears out in those forests,” protested Margie. “Just
imagine Phil and Ted at work in their fields when up comes Master Bruin
behind them and gives them a swat with his paw, knocking the mighty
captain of the Parker School Base Ball Nine out with the first blow.
Why—”
“Be sensible, Marg, if you can,” snapped Phil.
“Very well. Where do Momsy and Sallie and I fit in your plan? Dr. Blair
says Momsy must have a rest. But all I can see in your scheme is a lark
for you and Ted while we stay on here in the East.”
“We’d have Momsy and Sallie come out just as soon as we had filed our
entry to the land and put up a cabin,” declared Phil.
“Leaving me to the tender mercies of some orphans’ home here?” bantered
Margie.
“The bears would get you if you came out there; they like chicken,”
grinned Ted.
Margie was on the point of retorting, when her mother interposed.
“This is too serious a matter to be turned into a joke, children. I—”
What Mrs. Porter intended to say, however, was left unsaid, at least for
the moment, for before she could proceed, the door opened and in burst
several young people.
“Hurry and finish your suppers; we want you to go canoeing,” exclaimed
one of the girls. Then, as she noticed that Mrs. Porter seemed about to
refuse, she added: “Now you mustn’t say ‘no,’ Momsy Porter. It’s concert
night, and we can’t go unless you let Sallie and Margie and the boys go,
mother said so.”
“We’re going to sow wheat instead,” asserted Margie.
“That will do, daughter,” rebuked her mother. “I—”
“You will let them, won’t you?” begged another girl.
“Yes. Dr. Blair is coming to talk with me, so I shall not be left
alone.”
With a swish of skirts the girls swooped upon the frail little woman,
almost smothering her with their hugs and kisses, then rushed away, her
“be careful!” ringing in their ears as they trooped off, the boys
trailing behind, their arms loaded with cushions.