"Oh! That?" Rob hesitated. "Jones, you mean? He's a fellow I've met. He has some horses he wants me to take care of for a while." He stopped, then after a moment added, "If any one asks when I'm not home, just say I'm boarding them for a fellow." He stopped and after a few moment's silence began talking of other things.
There was so much to see and so many questions to ask that Harriet soon forgot about Jones. They were passing through one of the irrigation tracts which marked the new development of the West. Wherever the sagebrush had been cleared from a new piece of land, lay the smooth, level acres: wheat, pasture, young orchard or stubble. The fields were all of one size and were intersected squarely by the irrigation ditches. The barns and dwellings of these ranches were always near the road. Built of new unpainted boards, and unshielded by trees, they glared crudely in the blazing sunshine.
"Pretty good-looking ranches some of these fellows have," observed Rob, nodding toward a forty-acre stretch of young rye, green and flat as a billiard table.
"But how ugly the houses are! And so small!"
"You've got your ideas cut to fit the regulation New England colonial mansion, that's all. When I can afford a shack like that,—" he pointed to the two-room cabin they were passing, "I'll think I'm rich."
"Bobby! The idea. Why, what do you live in now?"
"A tent. I only filed on my homestead this spring, you know, and haven't had time to build. All last winter I was working for wages, feeding cattle for Dan Brannan, getting a line on feeding my own—and ever since I came in on to my land this spring after the break-up I've been so busy getting my springs fenced that I haven't had time to sleep scarcely. You can live in a tent for a while, can't you?"
"Why, of course!" Harriet hesitated, not wanting to hurt her brother's feelings by being too critical. "But where do you keep the food and such things? Is it safe to go away like this and leave it all open?"
"Sure. Who'd steal a few blankets and grub? My nearest neighbor is eight miles away and nobody much passes except cow punchers and sheepmen and they're honest, generally speaking."