The Claim Jumpers

The next afternoon, after the day's writing and prospecting were

finished, Bennington resolved to go deer hunting. He had skipped

thirteen chapters of his work to describe the heroine, Rhoda. She had

wonderful eyes, and was, I believe, dressed in a garment whose colour

was pink.

"Keep yore moccasins greased," Old Mizzou advised at parting; by which

he meant that the young man was to step softly.

This he found to be difficult. His course lay along the top of the

ridge where the obstructions were many. There were outcrops, boulders,

ravines, broken twigs, old leaves, and dikes, all of which had to be

surmounted or avoided. They were all aggravating, but the dikes

possessed some intellectual interest which the others lacked.

A dike, be it understood, is a hole in the earth made visible. That is

to say, in old days, when mountains were much loftier than they are

now, various agencies brought it to pass that they split and cracked

and yawned down to the innermost cores of their being in such hideous

fashion that chasms and holes of great depth and perpendicularity were

opened in them. Thereupon the interior fires were released, and these,

vomiting up a vast supply of molten material, filled said chasms and

holes to the very brim. The molten material cooled into fire-hardened

rock. The rains descended and the snows melted. Under their erosive

influence the original mountains were cut down somewhat, but the

erstwhile molten material, being, as we have said, fire-hardened,

wasted very little, or not at all, and, as a consequence, stands forth

above its present surroundings in exact mould of the ancient cracks or

holes.

Now, some dikes are long and narrow, others are short and wide, and

still others are nearly round. All, however, are highest points, and,

head and shoulders above the trees, look abroad over the land.

When Bennington came to one of these dikes he was forced to pick his

way carefully in a detour around its base. Between times he found

hobnails much inclined to click against unforeseen stones. The broken

twig came to possess other than literary importance. After a little his

nerves asserted themselves. Unconsciously he relaxed his attention and

began to think.

The subject of his thoughts was the girl he had seen just twenty-four

hours before. He caught himself remembering little things he had not

consciously noticed at the time, as, for instance, the strange contrast

between the mischief in her eyes and the austerity of her brow, or the

queer little fashion she had of winking rapidly four or five times, and

then opening her eyes wide and looking straight into the depths of his

own. He considered it quite a coincidence that he had unconsciously

returned to the spot on which they had met the day before--the rich

Crazy Horse lode.