per acre. Of course, any man who buys land
without seeing it deserves exactly the sort of land he gets. I'm not
criticising at all--merely pointing out that I know the rudiments of
the game."

"Help us play it, then," said York. "Dig into Prairie Southern, and see
what we get for our money."

William Bates Rapp did so. By various complicated and technical
documents he grafted the moribund Prairie Southern upon the vigorous
trunk of Western Airline, after which he washed his hands of the
operation by a carefully worded letter accompanying a huge bill of
costs, and dismissed the matter from his mind; for it was only one
transaction among a score of more important ones.

Later, the experts of the Airline descended on the carcass of poor old
Prairie Southern, to see what had best be done with the meat upon its
bones, and the result was fairly satisfactory. The traffic was
inconsiderable, but showed signs of improvement. The land hunger was
upon the people, frightened by the cry that cheap lands were almost at
an end. Many were stampeded into buying worthless acres which they did
not want, in the fear that if they delayed there would be nothing left
to buy. Fake real-estate schemes--colonies, ten-acre orchard tracts,
hen farms, orange groves, prune plantations--flourished over the width
and length of a continent, and promoters reaped a harvest. Land with a
legitimate basis of value doubled and trebled in price between seasons.

It was a period of inflation, of claim without proof, of discounting
the future. Men raw from the city bought barren acres on which
practical farmers had starved, in the expectation of making an easy,
healthful living. And in this madness the lands of the old Prairie
Southern grant, at one time supposed to be worthless, justified the
foresight of Cromwell York by reaching a value in excess of even his
expectations. For, given water, they were very good lands indeed, and
Western Airline was prepared to sell them with a water guarantee.

This took time; and it was two years after the acquisition of Prairie
Southern that York, a trifle grayer and a shade more dictatorial than
before, was one morning handed a card by his secretary. He frowned at
it, for the name was strange.

"Who's this Casey Dunne, and what does he want?"

Dunne, it appeared, wished to see him in connection with the Coldstream
irrigation project, then well under way. He owned property in that
vicinity; he also represented certai