uri. They're inclined to want salt with what we say about the
resources of the country. Even our chemical analysis of the soil, and
weather bureau dope, don't go very far with those hicks. They want to
talk with someone who has tried it, you see."

"I--see," said Andy thoughtfully, and his eyes narrowed a trifle. "On
the square, Miss Hallman, what are the natural advantages out here--for
farming? What line of talk do you give those come-ons?"

Miss Hallman laughed and made a very pretty gesture with her two ringed
hands. "Whatever sounds the best to them," she said. "If they write and
ask about spuds we come back with illustrated folders of potato crops
and statistics of average yields and prices and all that. If it's dairy,
we have dairy folders. And so on. It isn't any fraud--there ARE
sections of the country that produce almost anything, from alfalfa to
strawberries. You know that," she challenged.

"Sure. But I didn't know there was much tillable land left lying around
loose," he ventured to say.

Again Miss Hallman made the pretty gesture, which might mean much or
nothing. "There's plenty of land 'lying around loose,' as you call it.
How do you know it won't produce, till it has been tried?"

"That's right," Andy assented uneasily. "If there's water to put on
it--"

"And since there is the land, our business lies in getting people
located on it. The towns and the railroads are back of us. That is, they
look with favor upon bringing settlers into the country. It increases
the business of the country--the traffic, the freights, the merchants'
business, everything."

Andy puckered his eyebrows and looked out of the window upon a great
stretch of open, rolling prairie, clothed sparely in grass that was
showing faint green in the hollows, and with no water for miles--as
he knew well--except for the rivers that hurried through narrow bottom
lands guarded by high bluffs that were for the most part barren. The
land was there, all right. But--

"What I can't see," he observed after a minute during which Miss
Florence Hallman studied his averted face, "what I can't see is, where
do the settlers get off at?"

"At Easy street, if they're lucky enough," she told him lightly. "My
business is to locate them on the land. Getting a living off it is
THEIR business. And," she added defensively, "people do make a living on
ranches out here."

"That's right," he agreed again--he was finding it very pleasant to
agree with F