"There isn't any danger of that," answered Younkins, "if you are smart enough to keep well away from your boundary line when you are putting in your improvements. Some men are not smart enough, though. There was a man over on Chapman's Creek who wanted to have his log-cabin on a pretty rise of ground-like, that was on the upper end of his claim. He knew that the line ran somewhere about there; but he took chances-like, and when the line was run, a year after that, lo, and behold! his house and garden-like were both clean over into the next man's claim." "What did he do?" asked Charlie. "Skip out of the place?" "Sho! No, indeed! His neighbor was a white man-like, and they just took down the cabin and carried it across the boundary line and set it up again on the man's own land. He's livin' there yet; but he lost his garden-like; couldn't move that, you see"; and Younkins laughed one of his infrequent laughs. The land open to the settlers on the south side of the Republican Fork was all before them. Nothing had been taken up within a distance as far as they could see. Chapman's Creek, just referred to by Younkins, was eighteen or twenty miles away. From the point at which they stood and toward Chapman's, the land was surveyed; but to the westward the surveys ran only just across the creek, which, curving from the north and west, made a complete circuit around the land and emptied into the Fork, just below the fording-place. Inside of that circuit, the land, undulating, and lying with a southern exposure, was destitute of trees. It was rich, fat land, but there was not a tree on it except where it crossed the creek, the banks of which were heavily wooded. Inside of that circuit somewhere, the two men must stake out their claim. There was nothing but rich, unshaded land, with a meandering woody creek flowing through the bottom of the two claims, provided they were laid out side by side. The corner stakes were found, and the men prepared to pace off the distance between the corners so as to find the centre. "It is a pity there is no timber anywhere," said Howell, discontentedly. "We shall have to go several miles for timber enough to build our cabins. We don't want to cut down right away what little there is along the creek." "Timber?" said Younkins, reflectively. "Timber? Well, if one of you would put up with a quarter-section of farming land, then the other can enter some of the timber land up on the North Branch." Now, the North Branch was two miles and a half from the cabin in which the Dixon party were camped; and that cabin was two miles from the beautiful slopes on which the intending settlers were now looking for an opportunity to lay out their two claims. The two men looked at each other. Could they divide and settle this far apart for the sake of getting a timber lot?