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Updated: May 4, 2025
A couple of shanties, newly built on a near-by ridge, glittered like gold in the sun, and the piles of yellow lumber and the straddle-bugs increased in number as they left the surveyed land and emerged into the finer tract which lay as yet unmapped. At noon they stopped and fed their animals, eating their own food on the ground beside their wagons.
We ate our dinner on the bare sod while all around us the birds of spring-time moved in myriads, and over the swells to the east other wagons laden with other land-seekers crept like wingless beetles stragglers from the main skirmish line. Having erected our pine-board straddle-bugs with our names written thereon, we jubilantly started back toward the railway.
Young America don't understand why a pine or an oak tree can't be put over the course, like a sheep or an acre of grain. Besides, you talk like an old fogy. I'm surprised you don't admire the fanciful brackets and other wooden straddle-bugs people are so fond of decorating their houses with.
All questions were answered, all doubts stilled. We arose with the sun and having eaten our rude breakfast set forth, some six miles to the west, to mark the location of our claims with the "straddle-bugs." The straddle-bug, I should explain, was composed of three boards set together in tripod form and was used as a monument, a sign of occupancy.
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