They lease. In three years they
can gut enough out of somebody else's land to set themselves up for
life. It is sacrilege, a veritable rape of the land; but what of it?
It's the way of the United States."

He turned suddenly on Billy.

"Look here, Roberts. You and your wife are looking for your bit of land.
You want it bad. Now take my advice. It's cold, hard advice. Become a
tenant farmer. Lease some place, where the old folks have died and the
country isn't good enough for the sons and daughters. Then gut it. Wring
the last dollar out of the soil, repair nothing, and in three years
you'll have your own place paid for. Then turn over a new leaf, and love
your soil. Nourish it. Every dollar you feed it will return you two.
Lend have nothing scrub about the place. If it's a horse, a cow, a pig,
a chicken, or a blackberry vine, see that it's thoroughbred."

"But it's wicked!" Saxon wrung out. "It's wicked advice."

"We live in a wicked age," Hastings countered, smiling grimly. "This
wholesale land-skinning is the national crime of the United States
to-day. Nor would I give your husband such advice if I weren't
absolutely certain that the land he skins would be skinned by some
Portuguese or Italian if he refused. As fast as they arrive and settle
down, they send for their sisters and their cousins and their aunts. If
you were thirsty, if a warehouse were burning and beautiful Rhine wine
were running to waste, would you stay your hand from scooping a drink?
Well, the national warehouse is afire in many places, and no end of
the good things are running to waste. Help yourself. If you don't, the
immigrants will."

"Oh, you don't know him," Mrs. Hastings hurried to explain. "He spends
all his time on the ranch in conserving the soil. There are over a
thousand acres of woods alone, and, though he thins and forests like
a surgeon, he won't let a tree be chopped without his permission. He's
even planted a hundred thousand trees. He's always draining and ditching
to stop erosion, and experimenting with pasture grasses. And every
little while he buys some exhausted adjoining ranch and starts building
up the soil."

"Wherefore I know what I 'm talking about," Hastings broke in. "And my
advice holds. I love the soil, yet to-morrow, things being as they
are and if I were poor, I'd gut five hundred acres in order to buy
twenty-five for myself. When you get into Sonoma Valley, look me up,
and I'll put you onto the whole game, an