ld his experienced ears that some one's tin
garbage-can was passing.

He groaned. This was the day the Homeseekers' Excursion was due--coming
to view the land "where the perfumed zephyrs fanned the cheeks of men
and brothers!" Coming to breathe "the Elixir of Life," while they
inspected that portion of the desert which was "blooming like the rose!"

Even the elements were against him it seemed.

Symes shoved up the shade to see the lovely Pearline Starr, with her
head tied in a nubia, fighting her way through his front gate. She was
bearing ahead of her some garment on the end of a stick. Mr. Symes
dressed hastily that he might respond to her knock.

When Mr. Symes opened the door Miss Starr was clinging, breathless, to
a pillar of the veranda in order to keep her footing. She cast down her
eyes as she extended her offering.

"Are these yours, Mr. Symes? We found them around a sagebrush in the
backyard."

"If they were," said Mr. Symes shortly, "I'd be in bed. They look like
Tuttses."

The air was filled with flying papers, shingles, pans, and there were
times when he could not see across the street. Alva Jackson was in his
corral distributing hay among his horses from a sack instead of a
pitchfork. The Perfect Climate! Symes watched Miss Starr dig in her
heels and depart lying back horizontally on the breeze. Then he slammed
the door, but not before he saw Parrott's coal-house making its way
toward his lot. He already had a cellar-door and a chicken coop which
did not belong to him, while a "wash" he did not recognize was lodged in
his woodpile of jack-pine and ground-cedar in the backyard.

The Homeseekers' Excursion arrived at last--hours late--delayed by the
worst dust-storm in months. The committee of prominent citizens met it
where the cinder platform had been before it blew off.

The excursionists looked through the car-windows to see members of the
Cowboy Band with one arm locked around the frame-work of the water-tank
and with the other endeavoring to keep divers horns, trombones and
flutes in their mouth. No sound reached the ears of the excursionists
owing to the fact that they were on the windward side of the band and
the stirring notes of "Hot Time in the Old Town" were going the other
way.

Mr. Symes's neat speech of welcome was literally blown out of his mouth,
so he contented himself with shouting a warning to "look out for his
hat" in the ear of the first Homeseeker to venture from the car,