roker. An obscure little newspaper in a
desolate homestead country: but, given courage enough, that little
printing outfit would be a tool, a voice for the people's needs. It was
a gigantic task, this taming of the frontier.

And meantime, getting down to reality, I had a newspaper without a
country, without a living thing but prairie dogs and rattlesnakes to
read it. And around us a hundred thousand acres on which no furrow had
ever been turned.

We did not know where to begin. There wasn't a piece of kindling wood on
the whole reservation. We had brought what food and water we could with
us. Food, fuel, water. Those were basic problems that had to be met.

And then, within a week, almost imperceptibly, a change began to come
over the reservation. The Lucky Numbers were coming onto the land. On
the claim to the west a house went up and wagons of immigrant goods were
unloaded. Ida Mary rode over one evening and found that our new neighbor
was a farmer, Christopher Christopherson, from Minnesota. He had brought
plows and work horses and was ready to break sod, another example of the
farmers who were leaving the settled states for cheap land farther
west.

Mrs. Christopherson was a thrifty Swedish farm woman who would manage
well. There was a big family of children, and each child old enough to
work was given work to do.

Around us new settlers were arriving daily and we felt that the time had
come to start out among them with our post-office petition. With Pinto
as our only means of transportation it proved to be a slow job.

One day, dropping suddenly down off the tableland into a draw, I came
squarely upon a shack. I rode up, and an old white-whiskered man invited
me in. His wife, a gray-haired, sharp-featured woman, appeared to me
much younger than he. I explained my errand.

"For mercy sake," the woman said, "here you are starting a post office
and I thought you was one of them high-falutin' city homesteaders a
rec-connoiterin' around. Listen to that, Pa, a post office in four miles
of us."

The woman put out a clean cup and plate. "Set up," she said. "We ain't
signing any petition till you've had your dinner. There's plenty of
biscuit. I stirred up an extry cup of flour and I said to Pa, 'They'll
be et!'"

I ate salt pork, biscuit and sorghum while she talked.

"So you're going to handle newspapers too. Oh, print one!" She sighed.
"Seems to me that would be a pestiferous job. We're going to have a
newsp