And next day the patriarch wheeled his family and property to parts unknown.

A few days later Jim Merrick, a brisk farmer a few miles from the Bend, stood in front of his own house, and shaded his eyes in solemn wonder.  It couldn’t be—­he’d never heard of such a thing before yet it was—­there was no doubt of it—­there was a Pike riding right toward him, in open daylight.  He could swear that Pike had often visited him—­that is, his wheatfield and corral—­after dark, but a daylight visit from a Pike was as unusual as a social call of a Samaritan upon a Jew.  And when Sam—­for it was he—­approached Merrick and made his business known, the farmer was more astonished and confused than he had ever been in his life before.  Sam wanted to know for how much money Merrick would plow and plant a hundred and sixty acres of wheat for him, and whether he would take Sam’s horse—­a fine animal, brought from the States, and for which Sam could show a bill of sale—­as security for the amount until he could harvest and sell his crop.  Merrick so well understood the Pike nature, that he made a very liberal offer, and afterward said he would have paid handsomely for the chance.

A few days later, and the remaining Pikes at the Bend experienced the greatest scare that had ever visited their souls.  A brisk man came into the Bend with a tripod on his shoulder, and a wire chain, and some wire pins, and a queer machine under his arm, and before dark the Pikes understood that Sam had deliberately constituted himself a renegade by entering a quarter section of land.  Next morning two more residences were empty, and the remaining fathers of the hamlet adorned not Sam’s log, but wandered about with faces vacant of all expression save the agony of the patriot who sees his home invaded by corrupting influences too powerful for him to resist.

Then Merrick sent up a gang-plow and eight horses, and the tender green of Sam’s quarter section was rapidly changed to a dull-brown color, which is odious unto the eye of the Pike.  Day by day the brown spot grew larger, and one morning Sam arose to find all his neighbors departed, having wreaked their vengeance upon him by taking away his dogs.  And in his delight at their disappearance, Sam freely forgave them all.

Regularly the children were carried to and from school, and even to Sunday-school—­regularly every evening Sam visited the grave on the hillside, and came back to lie by the hour looking at the sleeping darlings—­little by little farmers began to realize that their property was undisturbed—­little by little Sam’s wheat grew and waxed golden; and then there came a day when a man from ’Frisco came and changed it into a heavier gold—­more gold than Sam had ever seen before.  And the farmers began to stop in to see Sam, and their children came to see his, and kind women were unusually kind to the orphans, and as day by day Sam took his solitary walk on the hillside, the load on his heart grew lighter, until he ceased to fear the day when he, too, should lie there.