as it the Portuguese ran up the price of lend?" she asked.

The young fellow broke away from union matters with an effort, and for a
moment regarded her with lack luster eyes, until the question sank into
his consciousness.

"Because they worked the land overtime. Because they worked mornin',
noon, an' night, all hands, women an' kids. Because they could get more
out of twenty acres than we could out of a hundred an' sixty. Look at
old Silva--Antonio Silva. I've known him ever since I was a shaver.
He didn't have the price of a square meal when he hit this section and
begun leasin' land from my folks. Look at him now--worth two hundred
an' fifty thousan' cold, an' I bet he's got credit for a million, an'
there's no tellin' what the rest of his family owns."

"And he made all that out of your folks' land?" Saxon demanded.

The young man nodded his head with evident reluctance.

"Then why didn't your folks do it?" she pursued.

The lineman shrugged his shoulders.

"Search me," he said.

"But the money was in the land," she persisted.

"Blamed if it was," came the retort, tinged slightly with color. "We
never saw it stickin' out so as you could notice it. The money was in
the hands of the Porchugeeze, I guess. They knew a few more 'n we did,
that's all."

Saxon showed such dissatisfaction with his explanation that he was stung
to action. He got up wrathfully. "Come on, an' I'll show you," he
said. "I'll show you why I'm workin' for wages when I might a-ben a
millionaire if my folks hadn't been mutts. That's what we old Americans
are, Mutts, with a capital M."

He led them inside the gate, to the fruit tree that had first attracted
Saxon's attention. From the main crotch diverged the four main branches
of the tree. Two feet above the crotch the branches were connected, each
to the ones on both sides, by braces of living wood.

"You think it growed that way, eh? Well, it did. But it was old Silva
that made it just the same--caught two sprouts, when the tree was young,
an' twisted 'em together. Pretty slick, eh? You bet. That tree'll never
blow down. It's a natural, springy brace, an' beats iron braces stiff.
Look along all the rows. Every tree's that way. See? An' that's just one
trick of the Porchugeeze. They got a million like it.

"Figure it out for yourself. They don't need props when the crop's
heavy. Why, when we had a heavy crop, we used to use five props to
a tree. Now take ten acres of trees. That'd b