up its best points when you take seekers out there. You'd
be so much better than one of our own men, who have the word 'agent'
written all over them. You'll come back and--talk it over won't you?"
For Andy was showing unmistakable symptoms of leaving her to follow the
man.

"You KNOW it," he declared in a tone of "I won't sleep nights till this
thing is settled--and settled right." He gave her a smile that rather
dazzled the lady, got up with much reluctance and with a glance that had
in it a certain element of longing went swaying down the aisle after the
man who had preceded him.

Andy's business with the man consisted solely in mixing cigarette smoke
with cigar smoke and of helping to stare moodily out of the window.
Words there were none, save when Andy was proffered a match and muttered
his thanks. The silent session lasted for half an hour. Then the man got
up and went out, and the breath of Andy Green paused behind his nostrils
until he saw that the man went only to the first section in the car and
settled there behind a spread newspaper, invisible to Florence Grace
Hallman unless she searched the car and peered over the top of the paper
to see who was behind.

After that Andy Green continued to stare out of the window, seeing
nothing of the scenery but the flicker of telegraph posts before his
eyes that were visioning the future.

The Flying U ranch hemmed in by homesteaders from the East, he saw;
homesteaders who were being urged to bring all the stock they could, and
turn it loose upon the shrinking range. Homesteaders who would fence
the country into squares, and tear up the grass and sow grain that might
never bear a harvest. Homesteaders who would inevitably grow poorer upon
the land that would suck their strength and all their little savings
and turn them loose finally to forage a living where they might.
Homesteaders who would ruin the land that ruined them.... It was not a
pleasing picture, but it was more pleasing than the picture he saw of
the Flying U after these human grass hoppers had settled there.

The range that fed the Flying U stock would feed no more and hide their
ribs at shipping time. That he knew too well. Old J. G. Whitmore and
Chip would have to sell out. And that was like death; indeed, it IS
death of a sort, when one of the old outfits is wiped out of existence.
It had happened before--happened too often to make pleasant memories for
Andy Green, who could name outfit after outfit