"Think you, Ned, me boy," said Battersleigh, one day, as they stood at the tent door--"think you, this old gray world has been inhabited a million years, by billions of people, and yet here we have a chance to own a part of it, each for himself, here, at this last minute of the world's life! Do you mind that, what it means? Never you think a chance like that'll last forever. Yet here we are, before the law, and almost antedatin' the social ijee. It's the beginning man, it's the very beginnin' of things, where we're standin' here, this very blessed day of grace. It's Batty has travelled all his life, and seen the lands, but never did Batty live till now!" "It's grand," murmured Franklin, half dreamily and unconsciously repeating the very words of his friend, as he had done before. Yet Franklin was well bitten of the ambition germ. It would serve him to run only in the front rank. He was not content to dream. He saw the great things ahead, and the small things that lay between. In a week he was the guiding mind in the affairs of the odd partnership which now sprang between him and his friend. Battersleigh would have lived till autumn in his tent, but Franklin saw that the need of a house was immediate. He took counsel of Curly, the cowboy, who proved guardian and benefactor. Curly forthwith produced a workman, a giant Mexican, a half-witted _mozo_, who had followed the cow bands from the far Southwest, and who had hung about Curly's own place as a sort of menial, bound to do unquestioningly whatever Curly bade. This curious being, a very colossus of strength, was found to be possessed of a certain knowledge in building houses after the fashion of that land--that is to say, of sods and earthen unbaked bricks--and since under his master's direction he was not less serviceable than docile, it was not long before the "claim" of Battersleigh was adorned with a comfortable house fit for either winter or summer habitation. Franklin meantime selected the body of land upon which he proposed to make settlers' entry, this happily not far from his friend, and soon this too had its house--small, crude, brown, meagre, but not uncomforting to one who looked over the wide land and saw none better than his own. Then, little by little, they got precious coal from the railroad, this land having but scant fuel near at hand, and they built great stacks of the _bois des vaches_, that fuel which Nature left upon the plains until the railroads brought in coal and wood. Each man must, under the law, live upon his own land, but in practice this was no hardship. Each must of necessity cook for himself, sew for himself, rely upon himself for all those little comforts which some men miss so keenly, and which others so quickly learn to supply. To these two this was but comfortable campaigning.