as
asked to submit the problems of my people, and in return I sought
information from them.

Small things, those frontier newspapers, but _The Wand_ had achieved
what Ida Mary and I had hoped of it, it had been the voice of the
people, a voice heard across the prairie, across the Land of the Burnt
Thigh, across the continent to the doors of Congress itself. Its
protests, its recommendations were weighed at last by the men best able
to help the men and women on the Strip. And the little outlaw printer,
to her overwhelming surprise, was being recognized not only on the Strip
but beyond it, as an authority on the homesteading project and a
champion of the homesteaders.

It was back on the lookout of the outlaw printer and the outlaw horse
thieves, that I got another letter from Senator Warren, asking what my
plans were for the future and whether I had thought of carrying my work
farther on, work where "the harvest was great and the laborers few," he
said. Should I decide to go on into new fields, I could depend upon his
support. He would recommend my newspaper as an official one; there would
be many opportunities, probably government posts for which my particular
knowledge would qualify me.

While I was still undetermined as to what to do after my work on the
proof sheet was finished, I was not a career woman, and Senator Warren's
suggestions received little serious thought. Ida Mary, I thought, was
serving the West in the best way for a woman. Needles and thread and
bread dough have done more toward preserving nations than bullets, and
the women who made homes on the prairie, working valiantly with the
meager tools at their command, did more than any other group in settling
the West. It was their efforts which turned tar-paper shacks into
livable houses, their determination to provide their children with
opportunities which built schools and established communities.

I was content for a while to thrust the thought of the future out of my
mind, but I continued to watch with tense interest what was happening
to the homestead country. A new land law had been passed which had a
strong influence on the agricultural development of the West. It doubled
the size of homesteads to 320 acres. This would bring farmers and
families for permanent building. It would give them more pasture and
plenty of land to carry on the fallowing method. To discourage the
prove-up-and-run settler, it required three years, a certain amount of
fen