was all right
once one got on his back, but only an expert bronco buster could do it.
Every time I set foot in the stirrup he went up in the air, pitched, and
bucked and sun-fished.

I couldn't draw $10 a week as a printer and waste my time on an outlaw
bronc. So I solved it by tying him short with a heavy lariat to the
corner post of the hay barn so that he could not get his head up or
down, nor his heels up very far. Then I gave one leap into the saddle,
Ida cut the rope close to his neck, and away we went to the print shop,
where I wrestled with the old, worn-out press. Fortunately, there was no
trick to dismounting, although I always expected the worst.

* * * * *

One day I broke loose. I had worked all morning and used up half a can
of grease on the press, and still it stuck. I picked up a hammer and
tried to break it to pieces. I threw one piece of battered equipment
after another across the prairie. ("Don't go near the print shop," a
little Randall boy warned all comers; "the printer's a-actin'.")

I scrubbed the ink from my hands and face and boarded the stage. I was
off to Presho to meet the proof-sheet king.

E. L. Senn was a magnate in the frontier newspaper field. His career is
particularly interesting because it is, in more ways than one, typical
of the qualities which made many western men successful. Basically, he
was a reformer, a public-spirited man who backed, with every means at
his command, and great personal courage, the issues he believed for the
good of the country, and fought with equal intensity those which were
harmful.

In the early nineties he had moved out to a homestead and started a
small cattle ranch. In itself that was a daring gesture, as outlaw
gangs--cattle rustlers and horse thieves--infested the region and had
become so bold and influential that it was difficult to get any settlers
to take up land in it. He started his first newspaper on his homestead,
miles from a post office, for the purpose of carrying on his fight with
the cattle thieves. In retaliation the outlaws burned him out.

E. L. Senn promptly moved his paper to the nearest post office at a
small crossroads station to continue the fight. He incorporated in this
paper final proof notices for the settlers. When the fight with the
rustlers had been waged to a successful close, he expanded his
final-proof business; now he owned the greatest proof-sheet monopoly
that ever operated in th