Harper's Round Table, March 3, 1896, Vol. XVII., No. 853

Copyright, 1896, by Harper & Brothers. All Rights Reserved.

Father limped across the dirt floor of our sod house, and painfully sat down on the edge of his bunk. Boys, he said, with a little groan, I guess you'll have to go after that Durham bull. My rheumatism is so bad I can't stir!
To-night? asked Barney, eagerly, giving his book a shove.
Who told you where he is? I asked, hoping for time enough to look up one more word.
They've sent word from Hermann's that he's been around there ever since that last herd came in from the South. They're going to move on early to-morrow, and I'm afraid we'll never see him if we don't get him to-night. Those drovers don't frighten off cattle that insist on going along.
Which Hermann's is it? I asked again. The ranch south of Alkali?
You'd better not be caught calling their town Alkali, interrupted Barney. They're touchier than ever about it since we got the county-seat away from them last election.
That's the place, answered father; and I reckon it doesn't take much of the potash out of their land to quit calling the town Alkali. No more will they get their county-seat back again by calling the place Fairlands.
I thrust my Cæsar under the brush thatch of our house where it joined the sod wall. Barney was rummaging in his bunk and preparing for the trip with unmistakable pleasure. He had not mourned greatly when father's health had compelled us to leave our home in far-off Illinois and settle in western Nebraska. But I had disliked to fall out of my class in the Pana High-school, and now, after working all summer on our claim, I was spending the fall and winter evenings in making up some of the neglected studies, with the secret hope that father would be well enough to spare me the next year.
You can get Otto to lend you his ponies and go with you, went on father. Take the lower trail to the ranch, so's not to go through Alkali. They've been feeling pretty ugly toward people from up here anyway since election, and I hear there's been a row about it this week and another of their men killed. And you be careful, Milton, and don't let Barney get into any trouble with the cowboys at the ranch. They're a dare-devil set; I wouldn't let you boys go if I could help it.