enator Phillips.

"Why that," he said, "is John Bartine!"

John Bartine was one of the most noted and romantic figures of the
western plains. He had come west with a few law books packed in his
trunk and no money, a young tenderfoot lawyer. He almost starved waiting
for a case. There were no law cases, no real legal difficulties but
cattle rustling, and nothing, apparently, that an inexperienced young
easterner could do about that. But he persuaded stockmen who were being
wiped out by the depredations of the rustlers to let him take their
cases against these outlaw gangs. He had himself elected judge so that
he could convict the thieves. And he had convicted them right and left
until a band of rustlers burned down the courthouse in retaliation. But
he kept on fighting, at the risk of his own life, until at last that
part of the country became safe for the cattlemen.

After we had heard him talk we discovered that the county division
problem was not as simple as it appeared at first. It wasn't merely a
problem of dividing territory; division would increase the taxes, the
non-divisionists said.

We hadn't thought of that. One did not pay taxes on the land, of course,
until he got his deed, but there were other taxes to be paid, and the
homesteaders felt they were developing resources for the nation at their
own expense.

I did not know how to carry on a campaign like that, but _The Wand_ put
facts and figures before the settlers, to bring the situation clearly
before them and let them do the deciding. When a frontier newspaper ran
out of something to do, it could always enter a county division fight,
as there were always counties to be divided as soon as they were settled
up, many of them larger than our smaller New England States. And, so far
as my own district was concerned, I had won this first battle with Judge
Bartine. But the fight against the measure was so strong that Lyman
County was not divided for several years.

Although the settlers had not been on the Brule long enough to vote,
office seekers kept coming through, asking the indorsement of _The
Wand_. "It's no wonder the men we elect to run things make such a fizzle
when they get into office," Ma Wagor snorted one day with impatience;
"they wear themselves plumb out getting there."

Old Porcupine Bear, wise man and prophet, warned us that it would be a
hard winter, and the plainsmen agreed that it was a humdinger. I asked
the wise old Indian how he co