wherever there are farmers,
the methods of cooperation will spread for decades. It is a good fight.
I hope I shall be in it._

_E. E. K._

LAND
OF THE
BURNT
THIGH

[Illustration]

I

A SHACK ON THE PRAIRIE

At sunset we came up out of the draw to the crest of the ridge. Perched
on the high seat of the old spring wagon, we looked into a desolate land
which reached to the horizon on every side. Prairie which had lain
untouched since the Creation save for buffalo and roving bands of
Indians, its brown grass scorched and crackling from the sun. No trees
to break the endless monotony or to provide a moment's respite from the
sun.

The driver, sitting stooped over on the front seat, half asleep,
straightened up and looked around, sizing up the vacant prairie.

"Well," he announced, "I reckon this might be it."

But this couldn't be it. There was nothing but space, and sun-baked
plains, and the sun blazing down on our heads. My sister pulled out the
filing papers, looking for the description the United States Land Office
had given her: Section 18, Range 77W--about thirty miles from Pierre,
South Dakota.

"Three miles from the buffalo waller," our driver said, mumbling to
himself, ignoring the official location and looking back as though
measuring the distance with his eye. "Yeah, right in here--somewhere."

"But," faltered Ida Mary, "there was to be a house--"

"Thar she is!" he announced, pointing his long whip in the direction of
the setting sun. "See that shack over yonder?"

Whipping up the tired team with a flick of the rawhide, he angled off
across the trackless prairie. One panic-stricken look at the black,
tar-papered shack, standing alone in that barren expanse, and the last
spark of our dwindling enthusiasm for homesteading was snuffed out. The
house, which had seemed such an extraordinary stroke of luck when we had
heard of it, looked like a large but none too substantial packing-box
tossed haphazardly on the prairie which crept in at its very door.

The driver stopped the team in front of the shack, threw the lines to
the ground, stretched his long, lank frame over the wheel and began to
unload the baggage. He pushed open the unbolted door with the grass
grown up to the very sill, and set the boxes and trunk inside. Grass.
Dry, yellow grass crackling under his feet.

"Here, why don't you get out?" he said sharply. "It's su