w. There's a lot of men employed there and I knew that
there was the place to go with my tomatoes."

"What, away out on the plains, beyond the valley? That must be twenty
miles away," Jessie remarked, as Mr. Wilson paused to chuckle over
some amusing reminiscence.

"It's all of that; maybe more. But you must remember that driving
over the plains is like driving over a level floor. Distance doesn't
count for much when the roads are always smooth and even. Well; one
afternoon Tom and I filled the bottom of the wagon-box with a soft bed
of fresh alfalfa hay and then we piled tomatoes in on top of it till
they came clean up to the edge of the top bed. Of course if the roads
had been rough it ain't likely that even a cattleman would 'a' thought
of taking such a load in that way; as it was, I reckon there wasn't a
tomato smashed in transit. I didn't get quite as early a start as I'd
'lowed to, so it was just noon when I reached the camp."

"I should have thought that you would lose the way," I said. My mind
had conjured up a vivid picture of the far stretches of unfenced
plains that lay between our mountain-walled valley and the great water
storage system where a single lake already sparkled like a white jewel
on the gray waste of plains. "There are wolves, too," I added,
suddenly.

"Yes; there are wolves, but they don't eat tomatoes. And, as for
losing the road, all that I had to do was to follow it; it stretches
out, plain as a white ribbon on a black dress. As I said, it was noon
when I reached camp. All hands had struck work and gone to dinner, so
I thought I'd wait till they got through before I sprung the subject
of tomatoes on them.

"There ain't a tree nor a shrub bigger than a soap weed within a mile
of the reservoirs, and as I didn't want to set and hold the horses all
the time, I unhitched 'em and tied 'em to the wagon-box; one on each
side. I knew that they wouldn't eat the tomatoes, and, as there was
plenty of horse feed in camp, I 'lowed to buy their dinner when I run
on to some one to buy it of. It turned out, though, that the horses
didn't understand about that; they had a scheme of their own, and they
worked it to good advantage.

"I strolled off, and pretty soon I got mighty interested in lookin' at
the works; it's a big enterprise, I tell you! I was gone from the
wagon a good deal longer than I'd laid out to be, and I don't know as
I'd 'a' woke up for an hour or two, but I heard a fellow laughin' ove