s with a smattering of advertising
from surrounding trade centers. But they were made up mostly of "proofs"
and ready-printed material supplied by the newspaper syndicates that
furnished the prints; leaving one or two blank sheets, as required by
the publisher for home print. The McClure _Press_ had two six-column
pages of home print, including the legal notices.

This paper was a proof sheet, pure and simple, run by a girl homesteader
who had worked on a Minneapolis paper. Myrtle Combs was a
hammer-and-tongs printer. She threw the type together, threw it onto the
press and off again; slammed the print-shop door shut; mounted her old
white horse, and with a gallon pail--filled with water at the
trough--tied to the saddlehorn, went loping back to her claim four or
five miles away. But Myrtle could be depended upon to get out the
notices, which was all the owner required.

One day when I went for the mail she called to me: "Say! You want the
job of running this newspaper? I'm proving up. Going home."

We needed the extra money badly. Proving-up time came in early spring.
To get our deed and go home would require nearly $300, which Ida's $25 a
month would not cover. Besides, I felt that I had been a heavy expense
to Ida Mary because of my illness on the road, and I did not want to
continue to be a burden to her. She had succeeded in finding a way to
earn money and I was eager to do my own part.

I didn't know as much about running a newspaper as a hog knows about
Sunday. It was a hard, dirty job which I was not physically equipped to
handle. But I had lived on a homestead long enough to learn some
fundamental things: that while a woman had more independence here than
in any other part of the world, she was expected to contribute as much
as a man--not in the same way, it is true, but to the same degree; that
people who fought the frontier had to be prepared to meet any emergency;
that the person who wasn't willing to try anything once wasn't equipped
to be a settler. I'd try it, anyhow.

"Any fool can learn to set type," Myrtle said cheerfully. "Then throw it
into the 'form' [the iron rectangle the size of the page in which the
columns of set-up type are encased, ready to print]. If it don't stick,
here's a box of matches. Whittle 'em down and just keep sticking 'em in
where the type's loose until it does stick."

She locked the form by means of hammering tight together two
wedge-shaped iron pieces, several sets of th