."

He wiped his glasses the better to behold his beloved water, then seized
a hoe and strode down the main ditch to open more laterals.

"He's the funniest barkeeper I ever seen," Billy commented. "I took
him for a business man of some sort. Must a-ben in some kind of a quiet
hotel."

"Don't drive on right away," Saxon requested. "I want to talk with him."

He came back, polishing his glasses, his face beaming, watching the
water as if fascinated by it. It required no more exertion on Saxon's
part to start him than had been required on his part to start the motor.

"The pioneers settled all this in the early fifties," he said. "The
Mexicans never got this far, so it was government land. Everybody got a
hundred and sixty acres. And such acres! The stories they tell about how
much wheat they got to the acre are almost unbelievable. Then several
things happened. The sharpest and steadiest of the pioneers held what
they had and added to it from the other fellows. It takes a great many
quarter sections to make a bonanza farm. It wasn't long before it was
'most all bonanza farms."

"They were the successful gamblers," Saxon put in, remembering Mark
Hall's words.

The man nodded appreciatively and continued.

"The old folks schemed and gathered and added the land into the big
holdings, and built the great barns and mansions, and planted the house
orchards and flower gardens. The young folks were spoiled by so much
wealth and went away to the cities to spend it. And old folks and young
united in one thing: in impoverishing the soil. Year after year they
scratched it and took out bonanza crops. They put nothing back. All they
left was plow-sole and exhausted land. Why, there's big sections they
exhausted and left almost desert.

"The bonanza farmers are all gone now, thank the Lord, and here's where
we small farmers come into our own. It won't be many years before the
whole valley will be farmed in patches like mine. Look at what we're
doing! Worked-out land that had ceased to grow wheat, and we turn the
water on, treat the soil decently, and see our orchards!

"We've got the water--from the mountains, and from under the ground. I
was reading an account the other day. All life depends on food. All food
depends on water. It takes a thousand pounds of water to produce one
pound of food; ten thousand pounds to produce one pound of meat. How
much water do you drink in a year? About a ton. But you eat about
two hundred p