"'How is it going to end?' I often said to Harry.
"'We can't lose anything, Bob,' Harry would say, laughing, 'except our lives, and they ain't worth much to anybody but ourselves; so I'm thinkin' we're safe.'"
Here Bob paused a moment to stir his tea, and look thoughtfully into the cup, as if there might be some kind of inspiration to be had from that.
He laughed lightly as he proceeded:
"I'm a bad hand at a yarn; better wi' the gun and the 'girn,' Harry. But I'm laughing now because I remember what droll notions I had about what the Bush, as they call it, would be like when we got there."
"But, Johnnie," Harry put in, "the curious thing is, that we never did get there, according to the settlers."
"No?"
"No; because they would always say to us, 'You're going Bush way, aren't ye, boys?' And we would answer, 'Why, ain't we there now?' And they would laugh."
"That's true," said Bob. "The country never seemed to be Bush enough for anybody. Soon's they settled down in a place the Bush'd be farther west."
"Then the Bush, when one is going west," said Archie, "must be like to-morrow, always one day ahead."