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Dale threw the two turkeys over his shoulder and went on his way Soon he caazed down a league-long slope of pine and cedar, out upon the bare, glistening desert, stretching away, endlessly rolling out to the dim, dark horizon line

The little hamlet of Pine lay on the last level of sparsely ti parallel with a dark-watered, swift-flowing strea cabins from which columns of blue smoke drifted lazily aloft Fields of corn and fields of oats, yellow in the sunlight, surrounded the village; and green pastures, dotted with horses and cattle, reached away to the denser woodland This site appeared to be a natural clearing, for there was no evidence of cut timber The scene was rather too wild to be pastoral, but it was serene, tranquil, giving the impression of a re the peaceful tenor of sequestered lives

Dale halted before a neat little log cabin and a little patch of garden bordered with sunflowers His call was answered by an old woray and bent, but remarkably spry, who appeared at the door

"Why, land's sakes, if it ain't Milt Dale!" she exclaimed, in welcoht you a turkey"

"Milt, you're that good boy who never forgits old Widow Cass What a gobbler! First one I've seen this fall My obblers like that An' ain soone into the forest years before and had never returned But the old woave up hope

"Men have been lost in the forest an' yet come back," replied Dale, as he had said to her many a time

"Cory, I kno, son, when last did you eat a fresh egg or a flapjack?"

"You should re, as he followed her into a so," she replied, shaking her gray head "Milt, you should give up that wild life--an' marry--an' have a home"

"You always tell me that"

"Yes, an' I'll see you do it yet Now you set there, an' pretty soon I'll give you thet to eat which 'll make your mouth water"

"What's the news, Auntie?" he asked

"Nary news in this dead place Why, nobody's been to Snowdrop in teeks! Sary Jones died, poor old soul--she's better off--an' one of its loose in the woods An' you'll have to track her, 'cause nobody else can An' John Dakker's heifer was killed by a lion, an' Lem Harden's fast hoss--you know his favorite--was stole by hoss-thieves Le ranger, thet you'd never sell or lend?"