“Seems to me, it would be safer to hide it in the hut. You might lose the bag, you know.”
Though he protested that he would not, Phil insisted, and they finally put the pocket-book, from which they took out all over one hundred dollars, dividing the amount between them, in an old tin can, burying it in the ground under their bed of boughs.
With axes and grub-hoes, the young homesteaders set forth to clear the first field touched by their irrigation system.
At Ted’s suggestion they began on the most densely brushed section, that they might do the hardest work while their ardour was most keen.
With a will they chopped and “grubbed,” but the headway they made was scarcely noticeable.
“Here we’ve been working two hours, my hands are so blistered I can hardly hold my axe or hoe, and you wouldn’t know we had been working at all,” exclaimed Phil, in disgust stepping out to survey the result. “Looks as though some animal had been rooting for fun.”
“Oh, come on. Wait till we’ve been working a week and then see what a change there will be,” returned his brother.
“A week?” expostulated Phil. “At that rate it will be fall before we have anything planted. There must be some easier way than the one we’re taking. I have it. We are a couple of ‘boneheads.’ We’ll use dynamite. We can blow more brush out in five minutes than we can clear as we have been doing in a day. Come on back to camp. You know more about handling it than I do.”
“But they only use dynamite to blow out rocks or tree stumps,” protested Ted.
“Then it will surely blow out brush.”