I could see nothing until, following the line of his arm and finger, I at length detected an object behind a little whitish willow bush, appropriately called the wolf willow. Even then I could see only a pair of sharp ears and the triangular outline of a head; there was nothing else visible.
"You better take him, Jake," I said. "You're a real shot." I felt I owed him that much for that wallop with the tent peg.
He was nothing loath to take up the rifle, and I began to realize how big a courtesy it was to offer us the first shot. He drew the gun to his shoulder, craned his neck down along the stock, steadied the barrel an instant, and fired. The coyote leaped in the air, fell on his back, kicking and pawing in the wolf willow. We drove over to him, but already his lips had curled back in a death-snarl from his gleaming teeth.
Jake drove on in silence while we meditated upon his amazing marksmanship. Any comment on our part would have been superfluous, a fact which no doubt our driver understood. But his thought was evidently running along some course similar to ours, although skirting into wider fields.
"If ever there's a big war," he remarked at length, "an' I reckon there will be some day, the chaps from these prairies will sure give 'em hell."
It was a strange speech for Jake. Jake, short and fat-waisted, guiltless of coat or waist-coat, his coarse blue shirt flying open at the neck, little streams of tobacco juice meandering down his stubby chin, his slouch hat pulled low on his head and his brown, tangled hair tufted out about the ears; most of all, his pudgy feet, which would not reach the floor of the wagon box—surely here was as unmilitary looking an individual as one could picture. And yet, his amazing keenness of eyesight, his quick, accurate, uncanny marksmanship, and his calm assurance in which there was no word of boasting, but a mere statement of fact, that if ever there were a big war the boys from the prairies would "give 'em hell!"
We camped that night by a stream of which Jake knew, because there was little water on the prairies, even at the first of May. Next day we drove all day, and later into the evening than usual; it was quite dark when we stopped.
"This is the place," Jake said, "but you can't see it to-night. Have a good sleep and we'll size 'er up in the mornin'."
We tried to eat breakfast without concern, but we were hurried and nervous, and eager to see how our judgment would tally with Jake's. On the road he had tried to explain to us the system of survey, and we had a general idea of it in our heads. Now he took a township map from his pocket and showed us in detail where we were.
"This is us," he said, pointing with a thick, stubby finger, "right on the north-west quarter o' Fourteen. Immedjut west of us is a road allowance, runnin' north an' south. Immedjut west of that again is section Fifteen, which is railroad land, an' can't be took up free. But immedjut north-west, cornerin' right against this quarter, 'cept fer the road allowance, is the south-east quarter of Twenty-two, which is open. Now these two quarters, north-west Fourteen an' south-east Twenty-two, is as good as any land that lays out o' doors, an' better than most. There's a bit of a gully here—you'll see it in a minute—runs down from the north-east an' cuts off to the south-west, an' runs right between these two quarters. There's springs in that gully somewhere, an' runnin' water practical the year round, an' shelter fer stock an' all that kind o' thing, an' you get the benefit of it all, an' it don't take two acres off'n your land. It's a plumb Paradise an' you can't beat it nowhere."