"But the best is yet!" Marjorie exclaimed. "Guess who's married?" "Jake!" we answered together. "Oh, somebody told. Yes, Jake. He and his wife are settled on Sixteen. They've a little shack up, and Jake is farming the community, as he calls it. 'Acquaintances,' he says, 'are about all I'll be able to cultivate this year.' He spends most of his time at Spoof's, but I don't notice that Spoof's work goes along any quicker on that account. They called on us a couple of times--Jake and his wife, I mean; they have the advantage over the other settlers of having a light wagon and a team of ponies, which make it easy for them to get about. Mrs. Jake impresses one as being angular and competent, with perhaps more heart in her than her appearance would suggest. They say it was an agency match." At that point we took up the story with Jake's account of his courtship and wedding, censored, of course, to suit the audience. "That's mostly lies," said Marjorie, in her matter-of-fact way. "He advertised for her all right, but he went to Minneapolis to meet her, and it was only when he promised to go on a homestead that she consented to come. She told me that much; said she'd had enough of the town, and wanted to get away from everything and everybody. She has a touch of humor, too; said, 'I guess that's what I did, all right, when I came out on the bald-headed with Jake.'" "But the telegram! He had her telegram." "He must have faked that. He knew he would meet you boys before he went back, and he had a story made up to show himself in the best light possible." "How about Mrs. Alton?" I asked. "She doesn't come out. We've gone over a couple of times, and she receives us with great friendliness, but when we ask her to return our visit she always makes out that she can't leave the boy. Of course she could bring him with her, so that is only an excuse. For some reason she wants to stick close to her homestead." "We must get Spoof after her," said Jack. "He'll drag her out. Now that we have real society in our community a beautiful young widow must not be allowed to 'waste her sweetness on the desert air.'" We spent a whole day conjecturing about the new arrivals, and marvelling over the strange assortment of humanity out of which it was the business of fate and our lucky stars--no one else seemed to trouble about the matter--to lay in these prairies the foundations of an enduring civilization. Then we settled down to what little work remained to be done. We found our oat crops harvested, and for that we had to thank Spoof and Jake, who had taken that bit of neighbourly service into their own hands. We made the stable snug, banked up the shacks with earth, and lined them inside with brown paper which we had brought from town for that purpose. We cut firewood in our little park by the pond, being careful to destroy nothing but trees which were already dead or were too crowded for growth.