. I
believe this can be made the greatest wheat country in America."

Judge Thayer brought his hand down with a smack of the palm that made
his papers fly, his face radiating the pleasure that words alone could
not express.

"I've been telling them that for seven years, Morgan!" he said.

"Hasn't it ever been tried out?"

"Tried out? They don't stay long enough to try out anything, Morgan.
They're here today and gone tomorrow, cursing Kansas as they go,
slandering it, branding it as the Tophet of the earth. We've never had
the right kind of people here, they didn't have the courage, the faith,
and the vision. If a man hasn't got the grit and ability to stick
through his losses at any game in this life, Morgan, he'll never win.
And he'll never be anything but a little loser, put him down where you
will."

"I've met hundreds of them dragging their bones out of Kansas the past
four or five years," Morgan nodded. "From what I can gather by talking
with them, the trouble lies in their poverty when they come here. As you
say, they're not staked to play this stiff game. A man ought to
provision himself for a campaign against this country like he would for
an Arctic expedition. If he can't do it, he'd better stay away."

"I guess there's more to that than I ever stopped to consider myself,"
Judge Thayer admitted. "It is a hard country to break, but there are men
somewhere who can subdue it and reap its rewards."

"I tried to induce the railroad company to back me in an experimental
farm out here, but the officials couldn't see it," Morgan said. "I'm
going to tackle it now on my lonesome. The best proof of a man's
confidence in his own theories is to put them into practice himself,
anyway."

"These cattlemen around here will laugh at you and try to discourage
you, Morgan. I'm the standing joke of this country because I still stick
to my theory of wheat."

"The farmers in Iowa laughed their teeth loose when we book farmers at
the college told them they could add a million bushels a year to the
corn crop of the state by putting a few more grains on the ends of the
cobs. Well, they did it, just the same, in time."

"I heard about that," nodded the judge, quite warmed up to this
long-backed stranger.

"Failure is written all over the face of this country," Morgan
continued; "I took a long tramp across it this morning. But I believe
I've got the formula that will tame it."

"I believe you, I believe you can do it," Ju