It was Sandy who solved the problem. "I'll tell you what to do, father!" he cried, eagerly: "you take up the timber claim on the North Branch, and we boys can live there; then you and Uncle Charlie can keep one of the claims here. We can build two cabins, and you old folks can live in one, and we in another." The fathers exchanged glances, and Mr. Howell said, "I don't see how I could live without Sandy and Charlie." [Illustration: YOUNKINS ARGUED THAT SETTLERS WERE ENTITLED TO ALL THEY COULD GET AND HOLD.] Younkins brightened up at Sandy's suggestion; and he added that the two men might take up two farming claims, side by side, and let the boys try and hold the timber claim on the North Branch. Thus far, there was no rush of emigration to the south side of the Republican Fork. Most of the settlers went further to the south; or they halted further east, and fixed their stakes along the line of the Big Blue and other more accessible regions. "We'll chance it, won't we, Aleck?" said Mr. Bryant. Mr. Howell looked vaguely off over the rolling slope on which they were standing, and said: "We will chance it with the boys on the timber land, but I am not in favor of taking up two claims here. Let the timber claim be in my name or yours, and the boys can live on it. But we can't take up two claims here and the timber besides--three in all--with only two full-grown men among the whole of us. That stands to reason." Younkins was a little puzzled by the strictness with which the two newcomers were disposed to regard their rights and duties as actual settlers. He argued that settlers were entitled to all they could get and hold; and he was in favor of the party's trying to hold three claims of one hundred and sixty acres each, even if there were only two men legally entitled to enter homesteads. Wouldn't Charlie be of age before the time came to take out a patent for the land? "But he is not of age to enter upon and hold the land now," said his father, stiffly. So it was settled that the two men should enter upon the quarter-section of farming land, and build a cabin as soon as convenient, and that the claim on the North Fork, which had a fine grove of timber on it, should be set apart for the boys, and a cabin built there, too. The cabin in the timber need not be built until late in the autumn; that claim could be taken up by Mr. Howell, or by Mr. Bryant; by and by they would draw lots to decide which. Before sundown that night, they had staked out the corners of the one hundred and sixty acre lot of farming land, on which the party had arrived in the morning. It was dark before they returned from looking over the timber land in the bend of the North Fork of the Republican. CHAPTER X. DRAWING THE FIRST FURROW.