t's a little different in this case, because there really
is something in the way of natural advantages to support it. It's not
all hot air. That'll make the event just so much bigger.

"Now, Dave, I've been dipping in a little already, and it struck me we
might work together on this deal. Your paper has considerable weight,
and if that weight falls the right way you won't find me stingy. For
instance, an item that this property"--he produced a slip with some
legal descriptions--"has been sold for ten thousand dollars to eastern
investors--very conservative investors from the East, don't forget
that--might help to turn another deal that's just hanging. Sorry to
keep you so long, but perhaps you can catch the press yet." And, with
one of his friendly mannerisms, Conward departed.

Dave sat for some minutes in a quandary. He was discouraged with his
salary, or, rather, with the lack of prospect of any increase in his
salary. Conward's words had been very unsettling. They pulled in
opposite directions. They fired him with a new enthusiasm for his
city, and they intimated that a gang of professional land-gamblers was
soon to perpetrate an enormous theft, leaving the public holding the
sack. Still there must be a middle course somewhere.

He walked to his little window and looked across the warm prairie. No
buildings cut his view from the brown hillsides where the lazy mists of
autumn beckoned to be out and free. It was a sleepy cow-town still,
and yet, as he now recalled, a new pulse had been throbbing its
arteries of late. The proportion of strangers--men in white collars
and street shoes--at the hotels was steadily growing. Rents were going
up. It was the first low wave--and Conward's ear had caught it. . .

At any rate, he could use Conward's story about the land sale. That
was news--legitimate news. Of course, it might be a faked sale--faked
for its news value--but reporters are not paid for being detectives.
The rule was to publish the news while it was hot. Nothing is so
perishable as news. It must be used at once or discarded
altogether. . . The _Evening Call_ carried a statement of Conward's
sale, and on that statement was hung a column story on the growing
prosperity of the city, and its assured future owing to its exceptional
climate and natural resources, combined with its commanding position on
transportation routes, both east and west and north and south. With
the industrialization of A