ondered, that city
folk were spending like water? I had come to think of wealth as coming
from the land; here people talked of capital, stocks and bonds;
occasionally of trade expansion. Surely this western development, I
protested, was responsible in part for trade expansion. Ida Mary had
said I ran to land as a Missourian did to mules; for the first time I
began to consider it as an economic issue.

I was restless during my stay in St. Louis; the city seemed to have
changed--or perhaps I had changed--and I was glad to get back home. It
was the first time I had called the West home.

Unbelievably unlike my first sight of the desolate region, I found it a
thriving land of farms and plowed fields, of growing crops and bustling
communities, whose growth had already begun to affect the East, bringing
increased business and prosperity, whose rapid development and
far-reaching influence people were only slowly beginning to comprehend.

All this had been achieved in less than two years, without federal aid,
with little money, achieved by hard labor, cooperation, and unquenchable
hope.

[Illustration]

XIII

THE THIRSTY LAND

"You'd better do a little exhortin'," Ma told me on my return to the
claim. "And if you get any collections, turn some of them in for the
good of the store."

"Isn't business good?"

"Business is pouring in. It's money I'm talking about; there won't be
any money until the crops are threshed--which will be about Christmas
time out here. Now in Blue Springs--"

I didn't hear the rest of it. In the city I had been struck by the
lavish spending of money, money which was at such a premium out here.
There was something shockingly disproportionate in the capacity to
spend by city people and those on farms.

"At least, the crops look good."

"But," Ida Mary pointed out, "they need rain, and the dams are beginning
to get low."

"What about the wells the settlers are digging for water supply?"

"They get nothing but dry holes," she told me. "Some of the settlers
brought in well-drills, but they didn't find water. They don't know what
to do."

All other issues faded into the background before the urgency of the
water problem. I packed my city clothes deep down in the trunk, never to
be worn again, and went to work!

A casual glance revealed no sign of the emergency we were facing. The
Lower Brule was a broad expanse of green grass and grain, rippling
gently in the breeze like water on