Then Ralph laughed outright as he noticed two, four, half a dozen chickens limping about cheerfully with a stick taking the place of one broken or missing foot, and at others with a wing in splints.
“What do you think of it?” inquired Glen eagerly.
“I think you’re a rare genius,” declared Ralph, slapping his companion heartily on the shoulder.
“There are some neighbors beyond here who have been awfully kind to us,” proceeded Glen. “They gave us an old cooking stove and other kitchen things, and now that we have the chickens and eggs we can trade in the neighborhood for most everything we want. We have plenty to eat--oh, you did a big thing the day you went bail for me on this chicken deal.”
Glen went into details about his business when they reached the house. He showed Ralph a book in which he had enumerated his various belongings. Then he made an estimate of what sixty days’ chicken farming would result in. The exhibit made Ralph dizzy. It was fowls and eggs and multiples of fowls and eggs in exact but bewildering profusion.
“You’re heading right, that’s sure,” applauded Ralph. “What’s that room for?”
Ralph was glancing into an adjoining apartment with a great deal of curiosity and interest. He had never seen such a room before. It held two rudely-constructed tables, and attached to these were some old telegraph instruments, just like the abandoned ones down at the old division tower shanty. Pieces of wire ran to the ceiling of the room, but no farther. On the wall above one of the tables was a great sheet of paper covered with a skeleton outline system.
Somewhere Ralph had seen a picture of a rude frontier train dispatcher’s office. This was almost a perfect counterpart of it. He fixed his eyes in questioning wonderment on his companion. Glen looked somewhat embarrassed and flushed up. Then with an affected laugh he said:
“This is my grandfather’s den.”
“But--the telegraph instruments, the wires?”