idn't you tell me where you were and what you were
doing?" She looked up at him with charming disapproval. "I feel like
shaking you! I could have made good use of you, Mr. Green."

"I was making pretty good use of myself," Andy explained, and wished he
knew who gave him that surreptitious kick on the ankle. Did the chump
want an introduction? Well! In that case--

"Miss Hallman, if you don't mind I'd like to introduce some men I
rounded up and brought here," he began before the Happy Family could
move out of the danger zone of his imagination. "Representative
citizens, you see. You can sic your bunch onto 'em and get a lot of
information. This is Mr. Weary Davidson, Miss Hallman: He's a hayseed
that lives out that way and he talks spuds better than anything else.
And here's Slim--I don't know his right name--he raises hogs to a
fare-you-well. And this is Percy Perkins"--meaning Pink--"and he's
another successful dryfarmer. Goats is his trade. He's got a lot of 'em.
And Mr. Jack Bates, he raises peanuts--or he's trying 'em this year--and
has contracts to supply the local market. Mr. Happy Jack is our local
undertaker. He wants to sell out if he can, because nobody ever dies
in this country and that makes business slow. He's thinking some of
starting a duck-ranch. This man"--indicating Big Medicine--"has got
the finest looking crop of volunteer wild oats in the country. He knows
all about 'em. Mr. Emmett, here, can put you wise to cabbage-heads;
that's his specialty. And Mr. Miguel Rapponi is up here from Old Mexico
looking for a favorable location for an extensive rubber plantation. The
natural advantages here are simply great for rubber.

"I've gone to some trouble gathering this bunch together for you, Miss
Hallman. I don't reckon you knew there was that many dry-farmers in the
country. They've all got ranches of their own, and the prettiest folders
you ever sent under a four-cent stamp can't come up to what these men
can tell you. Your bunch won't have to listen to one man, only--here's
half a dozen ready and waiting to talk."

Miss Hallman was impressed. A few of the closest homeseekers she
beckoned and introduced to the perspiring Happy Family--mostly feminine
homeseekers, of whom there were a dozen or so. The men whom the hotel
had sent down with rigs waited impatiently, and the unintroduced male
colonists stared at the low rim of Lonesome Prairie and wondered if over
there lay their future prosperity.

When t