"HAVE you come to tell me what they have decided, Dick?" asked Roger, on the following afternoon, when his cousin overtook him on the river bank, where he had gone to work halfheartedly on a new dugout which the boys were fashioning from an especially fine log selected by Bob himself. "Yes, father just came in to tell me that he and Uncle Sandy had finally determined that, since we were so set upon trying to save the farms, they could not stand in the way," replied the other, who was almost out of breath. Roger threw his hat high in the air, and his face broke out in a smile, as he let a whoop escape him that would have done credit to some Pottawatomie brave, eager to go upon the warpath. "That's the best news you could have brought me, Dick!" he exclaimed. "And how you fooled me with your long face. My heart seemed to drop away down in my moccasins, because I was afraid they had said 'no.' But I had a heap of faith in Grandfather Armstrong, and he was with us from the beginning. When can we start, Dick? Oh, the hours will drag like lead till we are off! Not that I won't suffer because of leaving mother and father and all the rest; but it means so much to everybody. And, Dick, do you think we will succeed? Can we overtake Captain Lewis, after he's had so long a start? And will Jasper Williams be there to sign that paper?" His cousin laughed at the flood of eager questions. "One at a time, Roger," he remarked, holding the other at arms' length. "They will not think of letting us off under two days, because our mothers will want to get so many things ready for us to take. But what does a little delay matter, when we know that we are going to take the great trip? Think of how every boy in the settlement will envy us, and wish he could go along. But this is too serious a business to think of taking any company with us. They would not have anything at stake, and might feel like backing down when troubles came, while we do not mean to let anything hold us back." Roger turned, and looked toward the west. That was always the "unknown country" to the American pioneer, even when the first of them climbed the Alleghanies, and from their tops saw the sun sink behind the forests beyond. It held mysteries that the eyes of white men had as yet never rested upon. Could there be a more enticing prospect to lure adventurous lads forward than this piercing of the wilderness, day after day, moving ever onward toward the distant shore of the Pacific, of which they had heard such great stories, handed down from the lips of those who had perhaps gazed upon the western sea in the East Indies; or it might be from the narrow isthmus down where the waves of the Caribbean Sea washed the shores of the Spanish Main.