y. We left ours open between the poles as a self-feeder through
which Pinto could eat hay without any work or responsibility on our
part.

Then one day Ida Mary went swinging down the trail to her school, a
small, sun-bonneted child at each side. The schoolhouse was much like
any country school--but smaller and more cheaply built. It had long
wooden benches and a rusty stove and in fine weather a dozen or more
pupils, who ranged in age from very young children to great farm boys,
who towered over Ida Mary, but whom, somehow, she learned to manage
effortlessly in that serene fashion of hers. In bad weather, when it was
difficult to travel across the prairie, her class dwindled until, at
times, she had no pupils at all.

[Illustration]

III

"ANY FOOL CAN SET TYPE"

McClure, South Dakota (it's on the map), was the halfway point on the
stage line between Pierre and Presho, three or four miles from our
claim. It consisted of the Halfway House, which combined the functions
of a general store, a post office, a restaurant, and a news center for
the whole community, with the barns and corrals of the old McClure
ranch. And set off a few rods from the house there was another building,
a small crude affair that looked like a homesteader's shack. Across its
rough board front was a sign painted in big black letters:

THE McCLURE PRESS

The first time I saw that sign, I laughed aloud.

"What on earth is a newspaper doing out here?" I asked Mr. Randall, the
proprietor of the Halfway House.

"It's a final-proof sheet," he answered, not realizing that the brief
explanation could mean little to a stranger.

These final-proof sheets, however, were becoming an important branch of
the western newspaper industry, popping up over the frontier for the
sole purpose of publishing the proof notices of the homesteaders. As
required by the government, each settler must have published for five
consecutive weeks in the paper nearest his land, his intention to make
proof (secure title to the land) with the names of witnesses to attest
that he had lived up to the rules and regulations prescribed by the
government.

Also, according to government ruling, such newspapers were to be paid
five dollars by the landholder for each final proof published, and any
contestant to a settler's right to the land must pay a publication fee.
Thereby a new enterprise was created--the "final-proof" newspaper.

These weeklies carried small news item