“So this is home,” said Charlie, gazing about. “What will mother say to this––if she ever gets here?”
“Well, we’ve taken a heap of comfort here, my old woman and me,” said Younkins, looking around quickly, and with an air of surprise. “It’s a mighty comfortable house; leastways we think so.”
Charlie apologized for having seemed to cast any discredit on the establishment. Only he said that he did not suppose that his mother knew much about log-cabins. As for himself, he would like nothing better than this for a home for a long time to come. “For,” he added, roguishly, “you know we have come to make the West, ‘as they the East, the homestead of the free.’”
Mr. Younkins looked puzzled, but made no remark. The younger boys, after taking in the situation and fondly inspecting every detail of the premises, enthusiastically agreed that nothing could be finer than this. They darted out of doors, and saw a corral, or pound, in which the cattle could be penned up, in case of need. There was a small patch of fallow ground, that needed only to be spaded up to become a promising garden-spot. Then, swiftly running to the top of the little bluff beyond, they gazed over the smiling panorama of emerald prairie, laced with woody creeks, level fields, as yet undisturbed by the ploughshare, blue, distant woods and yet more distant hills, among which, to the northwest, the broad river wound and disappeared. Westward, nothing was to be seen but the green and rolling swales of the virgin prairie, broken here and there by an outcropping of rock. And as they looked, a tawny, yellowish creature trotted out from behind a roll of the prairie, sniffed in the direction of the boys, and then stealthily disappeared in the wildness of the vast expanse.
The Settlers’ First Home in the Deserted Cabin.
“A coyote,” said Sandy, briefly. “I’ve seen them in Illinois. But I wish I had my gun now.” His wiser brother laughed as he told him that it would be a long day before a coyote could be got near enough to be knocked over with any shot-gun. The coyote, or prairie-wolf, is the slyest animal that walks on four legs.
The three men and Charlie returned to the further side of the Fork, and made immediate preparations to move all their goods and effects to the new home of the emigrants. Sandy and Oscar, being rather too small to wade the stream without discomfort, while it was so high, were left on the south bank to receive the returning party.