Bob learned to
economize speech, and so got along well with his strange companion.
By the end of the week the drive entered a cleared farm country. The
cultivation was crude and the clearing partial. Low-wooded hills dotted
with stumps of the old forest alternated with willow-grown bottom-lands
and dense swamps. The farmers lived for the most part in slab or log
houses earthed against the winter cold. Fences were of split rails laid
"snake fashion." Ploughing had to be in and out between the blackened
stumps on the tops of which were piled the loose rocks picked from the
soil as the share turned them up. Long, unimproved roads wandered over
the hills, following roughly the section lines, but perfectly willing to
turn aside through some man's field in order to avoid a steep grade or
soft going. These things the rivermen saw from their stream exactly as a
trainman would see them from his right-of-way. The river was the
highway, and rarely was it considered worth while to climb the low
bluffs out of the bottom-land through which it flowed.
In the long run it landed them in a town named Twin Falls.
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