Curly forthwith produced a workman, a giant Mexican, a half-witted mozo, who had followed the cow bands from the far Southwest, and who had hung about Curly’s own place as a sort of menial, bound to do unquestioningly whatever Curly bade.  This curious being, a very colossus of strength, was found to be possessed of a certain knowledge in building houses after the fashion of that land—­that is to say, of sods and earthen unbaked bricks—­and since under his master’s direction he was not less serviceable than docile, it was not long before the “claim” of Battersleigh was adorned with a comfortable house fit for either winter or summer habitation.  Franklin meantime selected the body of land upon which he proposed to make settlers’ entry, this happily not far from his friend, and soon this too had its house—­small, crude, brown, meagre, but not uncomforting to one who looked over the wide land and saw none better than his own.  Then, little by little, they got precious coal from the railroad, this land having but scant fuel near at hand, and they built great stacks of the bois des vaches, that fuel which Nature left upon the plains until the railroads brought in coal and wood.  Each man must, under the law, live upon his own land, but in practice this was no hardship.  Each must of necessity cook for himself, sew for himself, rely upon himself for all those little comforts which some men miss so keenly, and which others so quickly learn to supply.  To these two this was but comfortable campaigning.

There remained ever before the minds of the settlers the desirability of laying this land under tribute, of forcing it to yield a livelihood.  Franklin had no wish to depart from his original plans.  He looked to see all the ways of the civilization he had left behind come duly hither to search him out.  He was not satisfied to abandon his law books for the saddle, but as yet there was no possibility of any practice in the law, though meantime one must live, however simply.  It was all made easy.  That wild Nature, which had erected rude barriers against the coming of the white man, had at her reluctant recession left behind the means by which the white man might prevail.  Even in the “first year” the settler of the new West was able to make his living.  He killed off the buffalo swiftly, but he killed them in numbers so desperately large that their bones lay in uncounted tons all over a desolated empire.  First the hides and then the bones of the buffalo gave the settler his hold upon the land, which perhaps he could not else have won.

Franklin saw many wagons coming and unloading their cargoes of bleached bones at the side of the railroad tracks.  The heap of bones grew vast, white, ghastly, formidable, higher than a house, more than a bowshot long.  There was a market for all this back in that country which had conceived this road across the desert.  Franklin put out a wagon at this industry, hauling in the fuel and the merchandise