ce and working for himself.

"Sit down." He waved Bob to a chair. "I've been wanting to have a
talk with you--got a proposition for you."

CHAPTER III

Reedy Jenkins lighted a very good cigar and sat studying Rogeen with a
leisurely air. Bob was a good salesman and began at once: "Understand
you have been buying up leases, and I came up to sell you some farm
machinery."

Reedy took the cigar from his wide mouth and laughed at the joke. "I
don't raise cotton, I leave that to Chinamen--I raise prices. I'm not
a farmer but a financier."

Then returning the cigar to the corner of his mouth he remarked with a
pink judicialness:

"I should say you have a way with the ladies."

Bob blushed. "I never discovered it, if I have."

"I have, myself." Reedy bit the end of his cigar and nodded with a
doggish appreciation of his own fascination. "But I'm too busy just
now to use it."

"Rogeen"--Reedy laid the smoking cigar on some papers on his desk and
faced Bob--"I've had my eye on you for some time. I am buying up
leases across the line. I need a good man to work over there. What is
Dayton paying you?"

"Twenty a week." Bob was surprised at the turn of the conversation.

"I'll give you a hundred and fifty a month to start, and there'll be a
fine chance for promotion."

"What am I to do?" inquired Bob.

"Here is the whole thing in an eggshell. No doubt you are acquainted
with the situation over the line. You know, excepting one or two big
concessions, no Americans own land on the Mexican side. The land is
all farmed under leases and sub-leases. If a Chink or a Jap or a
wandering American hayseed wants to open up a patch of the desert, he
takes a five-year lease. As it costs him from ten to twenty dollars an
acre to clear off the mesquite, level the sand hummocks, and get his
ditches ready for water, he pays only one dollar rent the first year,
two dollars the second, and so on.

"Now"--Reedy picked up his cigar, puffed a time or two, and looked
speculatively over Bob's head--"if a fellow wants to speculate on the
Mexican side, he doesn't deal in land; he buys and sells leases. That
is my business. Of course, once in a while I take over a crop that is
planted or partly raised, because I have to do it to get the lease.
But you can say on general principles I'm about as much interested in
farming as a ground hog is in Easter.

"The price of cotton has been low, and for various and sundry othe