"It looks all right," said Marjorie. "I suppose it is as good as any. But I don't see how you are going to tell it from other people's land. It's all alike."
"What do you say, Jean?"
But Jean was looking at the sunset, where the Master Artist was splashing pastels of bronze and copper against a background of silver and champagne. "Wonderful, wonderful!" she murmured.
"Fourteen is Frank's and Twenty-two is mine," Jack explained. "We'll pitch the tent for the girls here, and Frank may do as he likes, but I'm going to cross the gully and sleep to-night under my own vine and fig-tree, so to speak. My six months' residence begins to-night!"
"Fig-tree!" Marjorie exclaimed. "The trees around here are just about high enough to tickle your ear—when you're lying down."
"You haven't seen the trees yet," said Jack, knowingly. "Now, let's pitch camp."
We went back to the wagon, but Buck positively refused to be disturbed. Neither coaxing, nor proddings, nor pullings, nor pushings, were of any avail; get up he would not.
"He's a squatter," said Jack. "A genuine squatter, and he refuses to be dispossessed. We must work around him." So we unhitched Bright, and by great effort unharnessed Buck, and left him until the spirit should move him. We dragged the tent close to the brow of the gully and pitched it on the spot where we had planned that my shack should be. We also unloaded part of our equipment so that we could make use of it in the housekeeping operations. It was with great zest that we carried our cookstove to the door of the tent and strung up two or three lengths of pipe. In a few minutes Jack appeared from somewhere with an armful of bits of wood, and as the darkness settled down we gathered about a fire on our own farms, for the first time in our lives.
The girls unpacked some of the supplies, and I was commissioned to milk our cow, and presently Marjorie was flip-flapping pancakes on the "spider" with the art of a mature housewife. "We should have sour milk for these," she protested, as she served the first helping.
"If that cow had been much longer on the road I think she would have been able to supply you," I ventured. "She has been looking sadder every day."