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“You people have certainly had the devil’s own time and through no fault of yours, unless it’s a fault that you aren’t quitters!”

“That’s right,” said Robbins. Orr’s eyes narrowed a little. Wallace continued, not taking his own eyes off the farmer’s:

“This country is all right when there’s a good year, but the good years come so seldom! What you fellows need down here is not free silver, but free water. With plenty of water you can raise big crops; and down in this valley there is not the danger, if we dig ditches, of the river running dry; we can get–“

“And who’ll pay for irrigation?” a voice demanded. Wallace did not shift his gaze to the speaker; he talked to Orr as if Orr were the only man in the room: “We expect to furnish the money.”

“And what will happen till the ditches are digged?”

“There’s alfalfa to be raised on all these abandoned fields.”

“And what’s to become of us ?” said Orr. “I can see where you folks can git a holt and come out even; but what’s going to become of us? Are we to move off the earth and let you stay here?”

Every one listened for Wallace’s answer. Even the boy in the doorway, returning with Wallace’s bag, stood half scared at the foot of the stairs, not daring to go forward.

“Why not stay and take pot luck with us?” said Wallace, coolly. “We bought the mortgages cheap, and we’ll sell them cheap. We’ll sell water rights cheap also. And you will make better colonists than any we could import–cheaper, too. It’s for our interests as well as yours to make a deal with you and to make one that will be satisfactory. Isn’t it?”

Orr’s hand dropped to his side, he shuffled his feet, his eyes turned from Wallace to seek the captain. “I hadn’t figured it out you was going to make any such proposition,” said the captain.

“Perhaps you thought we intended to chuck you all out in the cold and hog everything. We are neither such pigs nor such fools. You fellows can help us more than anybody else. Here is Johnny. Now, let’s come to business; but first, Johnny, get some glasses. We’ll all drink to the new deal.”

And afterwards they told with chuckles how even the captain, who was an original Prohibitionist before he became a Populist, touched his lips to the glass that was passed over the big map.

“All you folks here need is hope,” said the cheerful young Iowan; “you have plenty of pluck and plenty of sense and oodles of experience; and we stand ready to put in the capital. Now, what do you say; does it go?”

After an hour of talk over the maps, he repeated the question, and the captain himself led the chorus, “It goes. We’ll all stand by you!”

The blizzard had not come, and the moon was shining when George Robbins and Wesley Orr drove home from town. A basket was carefully held on Orr’s knees. Robbins was caroling the chorus to “Johnny Harvard” and wishing a health to him and his true love at the top of a hoarse and husky voice. Orr looked solemnly ahead into the little wavering disk of radiance that their lantern cast. Once he shivered violently, but he was not cold. Suddenly he spoke. There was a quiver in his face and his voice, but all he said was: “Say, he was dead right. We was so desperate we was crazy. Hope, that was what we needed, and he give it to us; but how some fellers would have messed that job, getting round to that same proposal we all wanted to hug him for! And–I’m glad he didn’t. I’m almighty glad we didn’t git a chance to do what we set out to do. He was slick. Say, what is it they call them newspaper boys? Spellbinders? That’s him–a first-class, A-number-one spellbinder!”