We shook hands with Jake and turned away with a strange feeling of cutting ourselves adrift. We had not known how quickly an attachment may grow--on the prairies. CHAPTER VI. If we thought we had finished with Jake it was evidence that we still had much to learn about our guide's business qualities. Jake had a follow-up peculiarly his own, and that afternoon he came steaming into our presence as we sat in the bare lounge-room of the hotel, making a list of necessities on the back on an envelope. "I been chasin' you fellows all over hellan-gone," he announced, with a profuse expectoration to facilitate speech. "I got a fistful o' luck fer you. Chap down at the stables--trouble o' some kind or other--wants to sell his horses; as pretty a team o' bays as ever switched a tail in fly-time, an' I can put you next." "That's good of you," said Jack, "but we've just figured that we can't afford horses. It's a case of horses and no cow, or oxen and a cow, and the vote at the moment stands unanimous for milk to our porridge, even at the risk of our characters. They tell us that even a good man swears when he drives oxen." "That's wrong," Jake corrected. "A good man don' drive oxen. He may be good _before_ he drives them, but not _while_ he drives them, nor immedjut afterwards. It's agin human nature. I've seen profanity on some o' the ox trails o' this country so thick it lay jus' like a fog on the prairie. You could jus' see the top tier o' the box," he added, with a touch of artistry. "Oxen has started more fellows on the wrong road than any other critturs--'cept women." "Well, we're going to take a chance with both," was Jack's answer. "You don't happen to have a hard-up friend who would part with a yoke of oxen, for a consideration, do you?" Jake scratched his tousled hair meditatively. "Come to think o' it, I believe I do," he said at length. "I jus' recommember a chap who was talkin' o' sellin' his oxen t'other day. As sleek a yoke as ever switched a tail in fly-time; gentle, an' strong, an' speedy as a scairt rabbit. I reckon I could get you a special price on 'em, pretendin' it was meself that was buyin'." "And a cow," I ventured. "Have you a cow on your bargain list?" "Jake has everything on his bargain list that we may happen to need," said Jack. "Everything from a cow to a cook-stove. It's all right, Jake; we don't mind your little graft so long as you play the game half fairly, and see that we get at least fifty cents' worth on the dollar. Buying on our own judgment we would probably get less than that."