gent an' makes you the same price—seven bones an' a grub-stake whether we hit oil or not, an' fifty plunks extra if we do. An' we will. No question about that. I know two claims that's jus' sittin' up an' yelpin' fer you lads to come along."

We withdrew and talked the matter over for a few minutes. In spite of Jake's unprepossessing appearance and boastful language there was something appealing about him. He threw out a bluff, frank, independent suggestion of friendliness which reacted readily upon us, and he looked like a man who knew the country. We returned presently with our minds made up.

"We'll take your offer, Mr. ——" Jack commenced.

"Jake," he interrupted. "No mister."

"All right, Jake, we'll take your offer. When do we start, what do we take, and where do we go?"

Jake looked interrogatively at the morning sun. Then, "Had breakfast?" he demanded.

"No."

"Well, fill up. You must be feelin' pretty well bored out after your trip. I'll start get the outfit together. I got a team of buckskins that's tougher than Little Eva in an Uncle Tom's Cabin show, an' a democrat bone-shaker that scuds across the prairie like the shadow of a cloud." (He had his poetic turns, had Jake). "I got a tent, but you'll need your own blankets. After breakfast we'll go over to a store an' buy a lay-out o' grub."

"How long will we be away?"

"Well, nat'rally we have to figger on driving out a good spell. Ain't no free land nowhere close to a city, a C-I-T-Y"—he spelled it out, with a whimisical mixture of pride and ridicule—"like this. Now I've a spot in my mind I think'll suit you boys right down the calf of the leg. It'll take us about three days to go, an' a day to look it over, an' three days to come back, which knocks the hell out o' a week, don't it? An' it might be longer."

"You see, we have our sisters here. We have to give them some idea——"

"Sisters!" Jake exclaimed, evidently in some panic. "They ain't goin' along?"

"No. They'll stay here until we get settled."

"That's all right, then," said Jake, visibly relieved. "Well, you tell 'em a week or ten days."

We related the morning's transactions to the girls, who accepted the situation with resignation, as it had been agreed that they would stay in Regina while we did our prospecting. They would at once set about to find cheaper lodgings, or a couple of rooms where they could keep house; they insisted that they were quite able to shift for themselves. They would leave word of their new location at the hotel.

The forenoon was well gone by the time we had finished our arrangements and bought our "grub", which consisted mainly of canned goods and other preparations that would not spoil in the heat. The democrat was a two-seated affair, and the tent and supplies were bundled on behind, or laid in the bottom. We noted that Jake added a rifle to the equipment. Then we started off, Jack in the front seat with the driver, and I alone behind.

For most of that day we drove through a country of almost absolutely level prairie, save for occasional rough spots which Jake described as "buffalo wallows", which threatened to throw us out of the "bone-shaker", as the buckskins never changed their pace, evidently still supposing that the democrat was following them like the shadow of a cloud. Jake told us that the buffalo wallows were once wet spots on the prairie where the buffalo came to roll in the mud, which had afterwards been baked hard by the sun. We did not know whether to accept this at face value, as it was not easy to tell when Jake was to be taken at par, but we agreed that that was a satisfactory explanation, and did not enter into a discussion. Through this country there were many evidences of prosperity and of the fertility of the soil, but Jake assured us that there was nothing to be had here, and in any case it was not to be compared with what we would find further on. The Westerner has a faith, which amounts almost to a religion, that there is always something better farther on.

During the day we discovered, also, that our guide was something of a philosopher. He had many shrewd remarks to make about immigrants, and homesteaders, and the business of settling up a country. It appeared that he had no very regular scale for his services. This came out in his account of the location of a young Englishman whom he described as Mr. Spoof.

"He had a carload of baggage," said Jake, with Western extravagance of language, "and when I suggested that he start up a second-hand clothing store he said, 'Ah, I'm afraid you're spoofin' me.' So I named him Mr. Spoof, an' he gets mail now addressed that way."

It seemed that Mr. Spoof had been inquiring in one of the hotels where he could cash a draft for sixty pounds when Jake took him in tow. "I knew that was no place for him—an' sixty pounds," said Jake, "so I hustled him out an' planted him on as slick a piece of farm land as ever grew a gopher. 'How much is your fee?' said he, very courtly, when it was all fixed up.

"'Sixty pounds,' says I, knowin' in advance the size of his wad.

"'My word!' says he. 'Isn't that a bit thick?'

"'Thick nothin'!' says I. 'Here I gets you a hundred an' sixty acres of land, as good as lies out doors, an' a chance to be a farmer, an' have your own stock an' herds an' house an' barn an' a wife an' a half-a-dozen kids—whad'ye expect for sixty pounds?'

"'It's a bit thick,' he kep' on sayin'.

"'See here,' says I. 'If you think this is a bit thick, as you call it, pay me the sixty pounds now, an' in three years bring me the title to your farm, an' I'll give you back your sixty pounds, an' not charge you a cent for the use of the land for those three years.' That seemed to shush 'im, an' he coughed up."

We laughed over the story. "I suppose you get them here as green as grass," I ventured.

"Oh, terrible, terrible," Jake agreed gravely. "An' in most unexpected places. But jus' you watch out!" he continued with a strange sharpness. "I took his sixty pounds because there was a dozen sharks on his trail, and he might as well give it to me fer somethin' as to them fer nothin'. But jus' you watch out that in ten or twenty years he don't have you beat to a custard. Dang me! I can't explain it, but there's somethin' in those fellows that won't go down—an' stay down. That is, most of 'em. Course there's failures everywhere," he added, generously. "They don' count."

"But do you think it quite fair," said Jack, and I knew that he was bantering our guide, or wanting to draw out his conclusions,—"do you think it quite fair to charge different fees for the same service?"

"Fair as fightin'," Jake declared. "It's like this. You go into the butcher's an' you order a cut of steak, an' he sets you back six bits, an' it doesn't matter whether it's you or me or the king—six bits is the price. That's business. But you go into a lawyer's or a doctor's an' what does he do? Looks you up an' down an' figgers out in his mind what you can damn-well pay, an' that's what he soaks you. That's a perfession. Locatin' homesteads is a perfession."

With this explanation of the ethics of his "perfession" we had to be satisfied. As the day wore on, the sun, pouring through a cloudless sky as clear as space, and the fresh wind which blew steadily in our faces, began to have effect, and we felt a smarting, tingling sensation over our cheeks and across our noses and chins. Jake had provided against this contingency with a box of axle grease; not the daintiest cosmetic, but a cheap and effective one. He now produced the box with the instructions, "Plaster it on. Don't be afraid of it."

We did so, somewhat gingerly, and laughed whenever we looked in each other's faces.

Jake turned in to a farm place in mid-afternoon for water. We could see the farmer seeding in his field; he made no stop on our account, and if he had a wife she remained indoors. We pumped as much water as the horses would drink, and filled our water keg, and then sat for a while