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The dog whined an interruption from the doorway, and the man looked up.

“Come in, boy,” he said, in recognition.

CHAPTER III–THE WONDER OF PRAIRIE

Ichabod and Camilla selected their claim together. A fair day’s drive it was from the little town; a half-mile from the nearest neighbor, a Norwegian, without two-score English words in his vocabulary. Level it was, as the surface of a lake or the plane of a railroad bed.

Together, too, they chose the spot for their home. Camilla sobbed over the word; but she was soon dry-eyed and smiling again. Afterwards, side by side, they did much journeying to and from the nearest sawmill–each trip through a day and a night–thirty odd miles away. The mill was a small, primitive affair, almost lost in the straggling box-elders and soft maples that bordered the muddy Missouri, producing, amid noisy protestations, the most despisable of all lumber on the face of the globe–twisting, creeping, crawling cottonwood.

Having the material on the spot, Ichabod built the house himself, after a plan never before seen of man; joint product of his and Camilla’s brains. It took a month to complete; and in the meantime, each night they threw their tired bodies on the brown earth, indifferent to the thin canvas, which alone was spread between them and the stars.

Too utterly weary for immediate sleep, they listened to the sounds of animal life–wholly unfamiliar to ears urban trained–as they stood out distinct by contrast with a silence otherwise absolute as the grave.

… The sharp bark of the coyote, near or far away; soft as an echo, the gently cadenced tremolo of the prairie owl. To these, the mere opening numbers of the nightly concerts, the two exotics would listen wonderingly; then, of a sudden, typical, indescribable, lonely as death, there would boom the cry which, as often as it was repeated, recalled to Ichabod’s mind the words of the little man in the land-office, “loneliest sound on earth”–the sound which, once heard, remains forever vivid–the night call of the prairie rooster. Even now, new and fascinating as it all was, at the last wailing cry the two occupants of the tent would reach out in the darkness until their hands met. Not till then would they sleep.

In May, they finished and moved their few belongings into the odd little two-room house. True to instinct, Ichabod had built a fireplace, though looking in any direction until the earth met the sky, not a tree was visible; and Camilla had added a cozy reading corner, which soon developed into a sleeping corner,–out-of-door occupations in sun and wind being insurmountable obstacles to mental effort.

But what matter! One straggling little folio, the local newspaper, made its way into the corner each week–and that was all. They had cut themselves off from the world, deliberately, irrevocably. It was but natural that they should sleep. All dead things sleep!

Month after month slipped by, and the first ripple of local excitement and curiosity born of their advent subsided. Ichabod knew nothing of farming, but to learn was simple. It needed only that he watch what his neighbors were doing, and proceed to do likewise. He learned soon to hold a breaking-plough in the tough prairie sod, and to swear mightily when it balked at an unusually tough root. As well, he came to know the oily feel of flax as he scattered it by hand over the brown breaking. Later he learned the smell of buckwheat blossoms, and the delicate green coloring of sod corn, greener by contrast with its dark background.

Nor was Camilla idle. The dresses she had brought with her, dainty creations of foreign make, soon gave way to domestic productions of gingham and print. In these, the long brown hands neatly gloved, she struggled with a tiny garden, becoming in ratio as passed the weeks, warmer, browner, and healthier.

“Are you happy?” asked Ichabod, one day, observing her thus amid the fruits of her hands.