The Claim Jumpers

led and carolled away with all their little mights, either in joy at the return of peace, or in sorrow at the loss of their new-built houses. Sorrow and joy sound much alike as nature tells

p eagerly from bed, to rush to the window, to drink in deep draughts of e

elter the burnished old gobbler spread his tail and dragged his wings and puffed his feathers and swelled himself red in the face, to the great admiration of a demure gray-brown little turkey hen. Overhead wheeled two small hawks screaming. They clashed, and light feathers came floating down from the encounter; yet presently they

are you goin

wept bare by the flood, not only of every representative of the vegetable world, but also of the very earth in which i

d. "I was just coming to see

way the timber began to jam, and it is a

ve experiences in the storm. It seemed that the Lawtons had known nothing of the cloud-burst itsel

was reflected from the girl's mood. She fairly sparkled

oing?" asked Ben

rejoined promptly. "Weren't yo

be too wet," he av

her saddle to inspect a large bundle and a pair of well-stuffed saddle bags, "I have here a coffee pot, a frying pan, a little kettle, two tin

igh the gaiety of her animal spirits had mounted. She sang airy little pieces of songs. She uttered single clear notes. She mocked, with a ludicrously feminine croak, the hoarse voice of a crow sailing over them. She rallied Bennington mercilessly on his corduroys, his yellow flapped pistol holster, his laced boots. She went over in ridiculous pantomime the scene of the mock lynching, until B

a ca?on filled already with broad-leaved shrubs, and thickly grown with saplings of beech and ash. Through the screen of slender trunks could be seen miniature open parks carpeted with a soft tiny fern, not high enough to conceal the ears of a rabbit, or to qu

r picnic here,

bottom widened out into almost parklike proportions. On one side was a grass-plot encroached upon by num

to the brookside he found that Mary had undone her bundle and spread out its contents. There were various utensils, some corn meal, coffee, two slices of ham, raw potatoes,

Well, I can; you

ht," objected Bennington dolefully as he

she teased. "Never m

and the so-called "camp fires" of girls. He collected dry twigs from the sunny places, cut slivers with his knife, built over the whole a wigwam-shaped pyramid of heavier twigs, against which he leane

at the creek, approached and viewed the tr

cooking fir

gether the two parallel logs with the hewn sid

ffee pot, and kettle across the two logs. I can get at them ea

Then the small cook collected her materials about her, in grand preparation fo

exclamation f

te your arms are!"

with a little blush, tu

y tanned,"

next, half filled with salted water, in which nestled the potatoes like so many nested eggs. Mary mixed a mysterious concoction of corn meal, eggs, butter, a

in," she commented, eyeing i

ong green switches, and stuck these upright in the ground in such

r cook there,

efly. Then relenting, "They finish better if

eam. Mary stabbed experimentally at the vegetables with a sharpened sliver. Apparently satisfied,

Go!" c

itch of ham in each hand, taking care, according to directions, not to approach the actual blaze. Mary borrowed his hunting knife and disappeared into the thicket. In a moment she returned with a kettle-lifter, improvised very simply from a forked branch of

she call

or him to watch the turn of her wrist, the swift certainty of her movements, to catch the glow lit in her face by the fire over which she bent. Then he suddenly r

cup at his side, and an eager little lady in front of him, anxious

w golden crispness which the originator of johnny-cake might envy; and the bread and cake and butter

ands, "the sun is still directly ove