ofin' it."

"There doesn't seem to be many of them to either walk or ride," the
traveler commented, sweeping a look around the empty land.

"It used to be full of homesteaders all through this country--I seen 'em
come and I seen 'em go."

"I've seen traces of them all along the railroad for the last hundred
miles or more. It must have been a mighty exodus, a sad thing to see."

"Accordin' to the way you look at it, I reckon," the bone man reflected.
"They're comin' to this country ag'in, flocks of 'em. This makes the
third time they've tried to break this part of Kansas to ride, and I
don't know, on my soul, whether they'll ever do it or not. Maybe I'll
have more bones to pick up in a year or two."

"It seems to be one big boneyard; I saw cars of bones on every sidetrack
as I came through."

"Yes, I tell folks that come here and try to farm that bones was the
best crop this country ever raised, and it'll be about the only one. I
come in here with the railroad, I used to drive a team pickin' up the
buffaloes the contractors' meat hunter killed."

"You know the history of its ups and downs, then," the young man said,
with every evidence of deep interest.

"I guess I do, as well as any man. Bones was the first freight the
railroad hauled out of here, and bones'll be the last. I follered the
railroad camps after they built out of the buffalo country and didn't
need me any more, pickin' up the bones. Then the settlers begun to come
in, drawed on by the stuff them railroad colonization agents used to put
in the papers back East. The country broke their backs and drove 'em out
after four or five years. Then I follered around after _them_ and picked
up the bones.

"Yes, there used to be some familiar lookin' bones among 'em once in a
while in them times. I used to bury that kind. A few of them settlers
stuck, the ones that had money to put in cattle and let 'em increase on
the range. They've done well--you'll see their ranches all along the
Arkansaw when you travel down that way. This is a cattle country, son;
that's what the Almighty made it for. It never can be anything else."

"And there was another wave of immigration, you say, after that?" the
passenger asked, after sitting a while in silence turning over what the
old pioneer had said.

"Yes, wave is about right. They come in by freight trainload, cars of
horses and cattle, and machinery for farmin', from back there in Ohio
and Indiany and Ellinoi--all over th