“I intended to ride around to-morrow,” he explained, and proudly pointed to his new equestrian outfit and the dapple gray at graze beside the lake.
“My! My!” she cried. “What a spendthrift! But I haven’t time to stop long. I just rode over to tell you that we’ve paid our pound of flesh and are almost ready to move onto the homestead. We’ll have about two thousand dollars in the bank, and I saved two span of my best mules, with harness, a couple of good wagons, a few slips and a scraper, all of the blacksmith tools, lots of hand tools, and—oh, a lot of junk! We feel quite prosperous. And now we’re through. Ma and I have nobody to depend on now but you. So whenever you’re ready, we’ll appreciate it if you will come over and help us move.”
“I’ll be over to-morrow morning,” he told her. “Are you glad it’s over with, Madge? Will you be content?”
“I’m glad it’s all over—yes. And as to my being content, you’ll have to take a shrug for an answer. Couldn’t you ride over to-night with me, so we can get to work early in the morning?”
“You bet!” cried Joshua, and grasped his saddle by the horn to shoulder it. “Let’s go!”
At ten o’clock the following morning Joshua drove a team of mules hitched to a laden wagon from the camp that the Mundys were deserting forever. Argo and Madge’s black gelding followed the wagon on lead-ropes. Shanty Madge, with her mother on the seat beside her, drove the other wagon and followed Joshua, and behind her trailed a wheeler. The white-aproned cook came out as they passed and waved his cap. A flunky at the woodpile lowered his ax and called good-by. Up at the works some of the men spied them, and a long shout of good will came down to them. The new manager, a Demarest, Spruce and Tillou man, hurried from his office tent, and, finding himself too late to offer his hand, stood spread-legged and waved his wide-brimmed hat.
There were tears in the reddish-brown eyes of Shanty Madge as she waved back right and left, but she straightened her sturdy shoulders and shouted ahead, a little tremblingly, to Joshua:
“Push ’em in the collar, old-timer! It’s a long trip, and we’ve got a load!”
“You poor dear brave child!” said her mother. “This is breaking your heart, yet you’re taking defeat like your father always did—with a shrug of the shoulders, and up and at ’em again!”
“Pooh!” sniffled Madge. “One has to experience a setback now and then, Ma, to get new adventures out of life and keep from growing stale. This is gonta be good! Hey, Joshua!” she shouted ahead. “I feel like an old-time pioneer! Thus was the wilderness subdued! Hey, old-timer?”