The Claim Jumpers

"I'm sure it must be," agreed Bennington uncomfortably.

"What was I a-sayin'? You must excuse me, Mr. de Laney, but you, being

a man, can have no idea of the life us poor women folks lead, slavin'

our very lives away to keep things runnin', and then no thanks fer it

a'ter all. I'd just like t' see Bill Lawton try it fer jest one week.

He'd be a ravin' lunatic, an' thet I tell him often. This country's

jest awful, too. I tell him he must get out sometimes, and I 'spect he

will, when he's made his pile, poor man, an' then we'll have a chanst

to go back East again. When we lived East, Mr. de Laney, we had a

house--not like this little shack; a good house with nigh on to a dozen

rooms, and I had a gal to help me and some chanst to buy things once in

a while, but now that Bill Lawton's moved West, what's goin' to become

o' me I don't know. I'm nigh wore out with it all."

"Then you lived East once?" asked Bennington.

"Law, yes! We lived in Illinoy once, and th' Lord only knows I wisht we

lived there yet, though the farmin' was a sight of work and no pay

sometimes." The inner doubts as to the biscuits proved too much for

her. "Heaven knows, you ain't t' git much to eat," she cried, jumping

up, "but you ain't goin' to git anythin' a tall if I don't run right

off and tend to them biscuit."

She bustled out. Bennington had time then to notice the decorations of

the "parlour." They offered to the eye a strange mixture of the East

and West--reminiscences of the old home in "Illinoy" and trophies of

the new camping-out on the frontier. From the ceiling hung a heavy lamp

with prismatic danglers, surrounded by a globe on which were depicted

stags in the act of leaping six-barred gates. By way of complement to

this gorgeous centrepiece, the paper on the walls showed, in infinitely

recurring duplicate, a huntress in green habit and big hat carrying on

a desperate flirtation with a young man in the habiliments of the

fifteenth century, while across the background a huddle of dogs pursued

a mammoth deer. Mathematically beneath the lamp stood a table covered

with a red-figured spread. On the table was a glass bell, underneath

which were wax flowers and a poorly-stuffed robin. In one angle of the

room austerely huddled a three-cornered "whatnot" of four shelves. Two

china pugs and a statuette of a simpering pair of children under a

massive umbrella adorned this article of furniture. On the wall ticked

an old-fashioned square wooden clock. The floor was concealed by a rag

carpet. So much for the East. The West contributed brilliant green

copper ore, flaky white tin ore, glittering white quartz ore, shining

pyrites, and one or two businesslike specimens of oxygenated quartz,

all of which occupied points of exhibit on the "whatnot." Over the

carpet were spread a deer skin, and a rug made from the hide of a

timber wolf. Bennington found all this interesting but depressing. He

was glad when Mrs. Lawton returned and took up her voluble discourse.