Joe looked toward the other side of the creek. The three cow elk, sure that the night was a cloak of safety, were grazing unconcernedly. Joe looked at the tall grass that could have grown only in fertile soil. He thought of last evening. Barbara and Ellis had gone wading in the creek. Barbara's legs, bare to the knee, had flashed in the setting sun, and through the clear water small stones that either were white or appeared to be white due to some trick of the water's reflection were plainly seen on the bottom of the creek. Out in the meadow, a meadow lark piped its greeting to the rising sun. The lark was Joe's totem bird and always a symbol of good luck. He said with sudden decision, "She won't have to travel. This is the place we came so far to find." CHAPTER SIXTEEN The Farm A hundred and sixty-five measured yards from the big pine in the meadow, there was an icy spring. It bubbled out of sand so white that it seemed to have great depth, and the overflow made its own little watercourse that trickled into the creek. The spring was four feet wide by two and a half deep, and Joe and Ellis made the watercourse a dividing line to separate the land they took for themselves. Joe went to the south, so that the great pine was on his property, and he chose very carefully. A man needed enough land, but not too much and Joe fronted his hundred and sixty acres on the creek. He wanted eighty acres of the meadow for crop and pasture land, and he ran his property back to the top of the slope so that he had eighty of timber. In addition, he allowed ten acres for the road that would one day parallel this creek. Snedeker had been right. The creek headed out two and a half miles away and throughout its length was natural meadow land that needed no clearing. Emigrants hadn't claimed it as yet because of the Indian danger, but nothing could keep them from coming here when the threat subsided. Some, sure of their ability to defend themselves, might come anyway. Ellis laid out his claim just as carefully, with a judicious selection of meadow and timber, and between the two of them they owned a half mile of timber and a half mile of meadow. It was much more land than they needed for the present and as much as they were likely to need in the future. Joe worked with a happiness and contentment he had never known before, and his pleasure was complete when baby Emma made a slow recovery. She remained frail and she could not be as active as the other children, but Emma nursed her carefully and watched her closely. She might have traveled on, but all of them had lost all desire to travel. They had chosen their home and they were happy with it, and the fact that it meant working from the time the sun rose until it set again was accepted as a part of things. There was a vast amount of work and never enough time. However, next season there would be only routine farm tasks and more leisure.