, harder than
drought or blizzard, but in one way and another we came through.

Instead of _The Wand's_ campaign against snakes injuring the Strip it
created a great deal of interest, and people said we were "subduing the
frontier."

Easy? Oh, yes; easy as falling off a log.

[Illustration]

IX

THE OPENING OF THE ROSEBUD

The settling of those western lands was as elemental as the earth, and
no phase of its settlement was as dramatic as the opening of the
Rosebud. Homesteading was now the biggest movement in America. We were
entering a great period of land development running its course between
1909 and our entrance into the World War in 1917. The people were land
crazy. The western fever became an epidemic that spread like a prairie
fire. Day by day we watched the vast, voluntary migration of a people.

Men with families to support, frail women with no one to help them, few
of them with money enough to carry them through, took the chance, with
the odds against them. I have seen men appear with their families, ten
dollars in their pockets, or only five after the filing fee on the land
was paid. I have seen them sleep on the prairie, get odd jobs here and
there until they could throw up a shelter out of scrap lumber, and
slowly get a foothold, often becoming substantial citizens of a
community they helped to build.

Free land! Free land! It was like the tune piped by the Pied Piper.
"This is the chance for the poor man," I wrote in _The Wand_. "When the
supply of free land is exhausted the poor man cannot hope to own
land.... If the moneyed powers get hold of this cheap land as an
investment, they will force the price beyond the grasp of the masses....
The West is the reserve upon which the future growth and food supply of
the nation must depend."

Ida Mary said that I was running to land as a Missourian did to mules,
but _The Wand_ was fast becoming identified with the land movement.

As the homesteaders flowed in a great sea out of the towns and cities
into the West, one wondered at their courage. There was not the hope
which inspires a gold rush, the possibility of a gold strike which may
bring sudden wealth and ease. The road was long, the only likely signs
of achievement an extra room on the shack, a few more acres of ground
turned under. And--eventual security! That was it, security. A piece of
ground that belonged to them, on which they could plant their feet,
permanency.

In answer to that