"In _this_ case, th' gent in question ain't built, dug er farmed. Ef he was t' show up an' want this quarter, he could git it by payin' fer our improvements. Ah reckon we'd hev t' sell an' pull our freight. But ef he was t' show up an' _not_ pay like a' honest man, they'd--they'd--wal, they'd likely be a _leetle_ disagreement." Dallas shook her head. "If he comes before his six months is up and improves, we got to go. That would be the only square thing. Ain't it so?" "Wal--wal----" began Lancaster, lamely. "It is," she said. "He filed on the quarter, and we had no right to settle----" "We _hev_ settled, an' th' lan' 's goin' t' be worth money," broke in her father. She put up her hand. "We got to go, if he comes. But"--she arose wearily--"if he didn't offer pay for our improvements, how _could_ we go, or get through the winter, or build again next spring? Our money's gone." "Look a-here, Dallas," began her father, crossly, "they ain't no use t' worry th' way you do. Winter is clost. It ain't likely th' man'll come along this late. An' ef he don' show up pretty soon, he ain't got a chanst. 'Cause, when his six months is gone, Ah'll make another trip t' Bismarck, contes' his entry, hev it cancelled an' file. _Then_, we's safe." She silenced him, for Marylyn was entering, and quit the shack. Outside, before the warped door, she paused. "He's always so sure of himself. But he can't do anything. And Marylyn--Oh, I _wish_ there was someone with us, now--someone that'd help us if anything--went wrong." Of a sudden, looking down at her hands, her eyes fell upon the crimson stripes left across her palms by the plow. And, in fancy, a horseman was riding swiftly toward her from the east, again, while she leaned on the cross-brace and waited. "Twenty miles," she said thoughtfully; "twenty miles." And turned the marks under. * * * * * Sun-baked, deep of rut and straight as the flight of a crow, lay the road that led northeast from the swift, shoally ford of the Missouri to the cattle-camp at Clark's. It began at the rough planking upon which the rickety ferry-boat, wheezing like some asthmatic monster, discharged its load of soldiers or citizens, and ran up through the deep cut in the steep, caving river-bank. From there, over the western end of the Lancaster quarter, across the coulee under a hub-depth of muddy backwater--at the only point where the sumach-grown sides sloped gradually--it took its level, unswerving way.