Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/269

 and hardship. A home, a piece of land with a fence around it, recorded at the county seat as his own. A social importance and dignity that freedom from wageearning servitude gives, the higher, nobler satisfaction of having a piece of this wide earth's ground that he could call his own.

It must be that, thought the doctor. It must be this great urge which has turned the faces of peoples westward, ever westward, in the world-old migrations of mankind. A home; a place to set a fence around and view with the satisfaction of something won.

Let it be barren, storm-swept, wind-plagued, sunstricken, such as this; let it be raw and unruly, heartbreaking to subdue, unfended, ungraced by the green leaf of even the stunted sumach of the more eastern prairie gulches. A place to set one's foot, and sit down after the toil of day; a place to stand in the midst of, and draw the breath of freedom with expansive pride. Home.

That was the answer to the world-old roaming, the world-old quest. That was the answer to this unequal contest against the unfriendly elements, this hard, unresponsive, rough-hummocked, wild, gray land. Home. That was the answer to it all.

Somebody on his way to Damascus, whose haste was greater than Dr. Hall's, came galloping up behind, breaking this meditative train. Hall glanced back to see if it was anybody he knew, concluding after a little study of the rider that it was not, although there seemed something familiar about the figure, whose long legs dangled far down below the body of his horse. Hall drew aside to give the rider an open road.