"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." "She's a great institution. Henceforth I consider a cow as necessary a part of travel equipment as a suit-case." And so we chattered on, saying nothing of moment, but feeling the great joy of possession welling in our hearts. It was a day and a night to be lived over many a time in memory. For the first time in our lives we were drinking of the wells of possession,--the enchanted streams which draw men and women into the wilderness to live and die on the outposts of civilization. We had finished supper, and the grey gloom of twilight was crawling slowly up from the east when a sharp, whistling rustle almost above us brought the girls to their feet with a start. "What was that!" Jean exclaimed. "It was almost like a bullet." "Nay, nay," said Jack, indulging in a very sorry joke. "It is a ducklet." "A ducklet? What ducklet?" "That, my dear sister, was the whistle from the wing of a wild duck, darting into the darkness at a couple of hundred miles an hour. He had just got his eye on you." "More likely on the gun," said Jean, for we had included a cheap shot-gun among the articles considered indispensable. "Wait until Frank gets after him."