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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

MAY

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.”