Page:Hugh Pendexter--Tiberius Smith.djvu/32

 black flies and grasshoppers have a life easement on the horizon.

"I objected, for it was daily becoming harder to feed the army. But Tib laid in a stock of tinned stuff at the last cross-roads store, and, crying 'Excelsior,' we hiked on until we came to a range of knobs that aren't down on the map. Tib thought it was the boundary, and insisted that we surmount the barrier and squint our orbs at the Lady of the Snows. It was a tough climb, but at sundown we reached the top, where we pitched a small shelter-tent and camped for the night.

"In the morning we beheld a small settlement of rudely constructed houses, sleeping in a cup-like depression.

"‘It isn't on the time-tables,' murmured Tib; 'and yet human beings dwell therein. We'll go down.'

"Utterly fagged out, we struck the burgh late in the afternoon and found it to be a lost town, the habitat of the stay-at-home germ. I doubt if the United States can furnish similar conditions, ransack its borders as you will.

"The fact that French and half-breed farmers had settled down in several communities within a radius of twenty miles did not detract from these people's isolation, for they were of our blood and had never assimilated with their neighbors. The