The Claim Jumpers

d to go deer hunting. He had skipped thirteen chapters of his work to describe the heroine, R

ou advised at parting; by which he mean

re were outcrops, boulders, ravines, broken twigs, old leaves, and dikes, all of which had to be surmounted or

holes of great depth and perpendicularity were opened in them. Thereupon the interior fires were released, and these, vomiting up a vast supply of molten material, filled said chasms and holes to the very brim. The molten material cooled into fire-hardened rock. The rains descended and the snows melte

d still others are nearly round. All, however, are highest points,

imes he found hobnails much inclined to click against unforeseen stones. The broken twig came to possess other than liter

e strange contrast between the mischief in her eyes and the austerity of her brow, or the queer little fashion she had of winking rapidly four or five times, and then opening her eyes wide and

nition of this fact, her voice s

ttle boy!"

hat he was please

answered; "w

ht h

he dark green of the trees, was most beautiful and unusual. Nature rarely uses pink, except in sunsets and in flowers. Bennington thought pleasedly how every impression this girl

the clear voice. "You ought to feel

ver the tops of trees standing but a few rods away from him. He could see that the summit of this dike was probably nearly flat, and he surmised that, once up there, one would become master of a pretty enough little plateau on which to sit; but his careful circumvallation could discover no possible method of ascent. The walls affor

d did you get up

lained, with gr

," he warned hastily; he

," said she, "an

how you got up. I w

ou know I

d Bennington, rather at a loss for a valid

them. There's a big fl

ish you'd let me up," he begged petulant

. You'll have to talk from

he young man, adopting a tone

you think that a creature who could fly to the

asked the easily b

ay. I'm n

are yo

un f

un f

nice downy one, I mean. That's my couch. I sleep on it all ni

sat down on the flat rock before indicated, and clasped his knee with his hands, prepared to enjo

e came down to hi

be a very

throne you

e often heard that throne

rd, flat rocks. And the nice warm sun is shining on me-it must be rather chilly in the woods to-day. And there is a breeze blowing from the Big Horn-

do you tantalize me so with the delights f

s a shor

hing you've done?" asked

treetop, to apologize to Lawton's girl. The incongruity now was in forcing into this Arcadian incident anything savouring of conventionality at all. It had been so idyllic, this talk of the sun fairy an

pologies?" he asked pres

y mi

fairy is offered one

a good

eed,

f the rock, inspected him gravely

accepted," s

re you going to let down your rope ladder, or

lant voice, "and so foolish! It is like

alk every day to a sun fairy, and the experience

ed, to one who has but to close her eyes and she finds hers

oved more contentedly, "and as a r

then, with instinctive tact,

d that he had followed his impulse to ask just this question i

trees from on top? They are quite different. And out from the pines come great round hills made all of stone. I think they loo

as the voice paused. "A

beginning to shine through it just a very little. And out beyond there is a sparkle. Tha

off with a hap

iptive; but more in the exquisite modulations of the voice, adding here a tint, there a shade to the picture, and casting over the whole that poetic gl

d, reappeared perked

nk minin' is goin' t' pan out well this yar spring?" Then she caught sight o

I might s

al tone. "You is shore a tenderfoot! Don' you-all know th

No, I hadn't thought of that,

aid she, a little wistfully.

s," answered Benni

bres?" inquired the sun

astonished at so much femi

never saw any of those. M

y. More than once

n. You sit right s

corner, picking her way over the loose blocks of stone. With the finger-tips of either hand she held the pink starched skirt up, display

id she, glancing down

tood up beside him with a pr

see it,"

ng down and back the lever in a manner that showed

ed, squinting through the sigh

mokeless powd

What'll we

in his pockets and

this?"

thirty paces distant, on which she pinned the bit of paper. They shot. Bennington

rude or very sincer

best shot I

girl!'" she interrupted q

his a

as, and I insis

ton con

of the rock there, and see the pines, a

"It is my very own," she said doubtfully.

cleft in the rocks and perched on a moss-covered log, chattering e

t. She seized the rifle, and taking careful aim, fir

ong steel-jacketed bullet had just grazed the base of its brain.

riped, its little whiskers were as perfect as those of the great squirrels in the timber bottom. In its pouches were the roots of pine cones. Bennington was not a

om him to the dead chipmunk, and back a

ed. "What did I do it for? W

en that the young man

get back home, and we'll cure the skin, and you can make something out of it-a spectacle case," he suggested at random. "I know how you feel," he went on, t

ck, quite out of sight, and stood back as thou

each not at all to her real nature, she had changed from an aspect of passionate grief to one of solemn

p on my rock," she said

close examination of the cliff itself. At a distance of about twenty feet from the dike grew a large pine tree, the lowest branch of which extended directly over the little plateau and a

irl. "Now you go back around the corne

he heard again the voice in the air

eet of the large branch that reached across to the dike, the smaller

d, "how did yo

ectantly, and then, to his surprise, he ob

oice after a moment's hesi

she too began to laugh in an embarrassed manner. Whereupon Bennington laughed the harder. He shinned up the tree, to find that an ingenious hand rope had been fitted

g, swelling, breaking against the barrier of a dike, or lapping the foot of a great round boulder-mountain. Here and there a darker spot suggested a break for a mountain peak; rarely a fleck of white marked a mountain road. Back of them all-ridge, mountain, cavernous valley-towered old Harney, sun-browned, rock-diademed, a few wisps of cloud streaming do

th, and looked about in all di

murmured at last with a ha

d his han

more than that!" she cried. "I feel th