Jean MacDonald--Homesteader

But it was to be just theirs no longer. The slow, steady tide of oncoming progress had refused to let it alone. In the spring while Virginia was still at St. Helen's, Donald, home for the Easter recess, had written her of two homesteaders' cabins on the mesa toward the southeast, of fences being built, and of sagebrush rooted up and burned.

It was even less theirs on this August morning, for the cabin of another homesteader had risen as though by magic in the southwest corner; ten acres of freshly-plowed land were being warmed by the sun and made ready for September wheat; and rods of stout barbed-wire tacked to strong, well-made fence-poles were guarding the future wheat against all intruders. The cabin, superior in plan and workmanship to that of the average homesteader, faced the west. It was built of new spruce logs, with well-filled chinks, and boasted two large windows and a porch, in addition to its necessary door. Moreover, an outside stone chimney betokened a fire-place--an untold luxury to a homesteader. A second wire fence, set at some three rods from the cabin, inclosed it on all sides, and protected a small vegetable garden and a few fruit trees, which the owner had already planted.

It was a good quarter section upon which this ambitious homesteader had filed. On the south the mesa mounted into the higher hills, and this claim included timber; the land already plowed showed the soil to be black and fertile; and a creek, tumbling from the mountains and hurrying by just back of the cabin, promised plenty of water, even in a thirsty season. With a substantial new cabin, three cows and a horse, some hens and two collie dogs, a crop nearly in, fruit trees thriving and a garden growing like wild-fire--what more could one desire? Then add to riches already possessed, the surety of a barn and corral in September, and the probability of twelve pure-bred Shropshire sheep, and what homesteader would not sing for joy?