tic number made sense.

The next morning at sun-up we were on our way. At that hour the little
homestead town of Ft. Pierre lay quiet. Other homesteaders were ready to
start out: a farmer and his wife from Wisconsin, who were busy
sandwiching their four children into a wagon already filled with
immigrant goods, a cow and horse tied on behind.

At a long table in the fly-specked hotel dining room we ate flapjacks
and fried potatoes and drank strong coffee in big heavy cups. Then, at
long last, perched on the seat of the claim locator's high spring wagon,
we jolted out of town, swerving to let a stagecoach loaded with
passengers whip past us, waiting while a team of buffalo ambled past,
and finally jogged along the beaten road through the bad lands outside
of town.

Beyond the rough bad lands we came upon the prairie. We traveled for
miles along a narrow, rutted road crossed now and then by dim trails
leading nowhere, it seemed. Our own road dwindled to a rough trail, and
the spring wagon lurched over it while we clung to the sides to ease the
constant jolting, letting go to pull our hats over our eyes which ached
with the glare, or over the back of our necks which were blistered from
the sun.

Our frantic haste to arrive while the land lasted seemed absurd now.
There was land enough for all who wanted it, and few enough to claim it.
All that weary day we saw no people save in the distance a few
homesteaders mowing strips of the short dry grass for hay. Now and then
we passed a few head of horses and a cow grazing. Here and there over
the hot, dusty plain we saw shacks and makeshift houses surrounded by
patches of corn or flax or dried-up garden. Why were the houses so
scattered, looking as though they had been thrown down at random? "They
had to be set on the claims," our locator said dryly.

About noon we stopped at a deserted ranch house, surrounded by
corrals--a camp, our driver explained, where some stockman held his
cattle overnight in driving them to market. Here we ate a lunch and the
locator fed and watered the team, refilling the jars from an old well
with its long wooden water troughs.

There the trail ended. Now we struck out over a trackless land that grew
rougher the farther we went. To look for a quarter-section here was like
looking for a needle in a haystack. It was late summer and the sun beat
down on the hot prairie grass and upon our heads. We had driven all day
without sign of shade--and save f