And as to all this"--he waved his hand toward the wheat--"I can
net a right good bank-account for myself and I can pay off the mortgage
I put on my claim to pay the lease on yours, and for steam-plows and
such things. It has been a bumper year for wheat down here. I have
reclaimed the land from the desert. It will revert to you now--you and
your artist cousin jointly, I suppose. The river helped to finish the
work for me--found its old bed in that low sandy streak where years ago
the blowout began. It has straightened its bend for itself and got away
from that ledge below the deep hole, and left the rest of the ground,
all the upper portion of the blowout, yours and mine, covered with a
fine silt, splendid for cultivation. The blowout is dead. It took hard
work and patience and a big risk, of course, and the Lord Almighty at
last for a partner in the firm to kill it off. Your own comes back to
you now. Can I be of any further service to you?"

As he stood there with folded arms beside the car, tall and rugged, with
the triumph of overcoming deep written on his sad face, the width of the
earth seemed suddenly to yawn between him and the lucky artist who had
inherited a fortune without labor.

"You have done more than to reclaim this ground, Joe," Jerry exclaimed.
"Miraculous as it all is, there is a bigger desert than this, the waste
and useless desert in the human heart. You have helped to reclaim to a
better life a foolish, romancing, daring girl, with no true conception
of what makes life worth while. All the Sage Brush Valley has been good
to me. York and Laura Macpherson in their well-bred, wholesome
friendship; little Mr. Ponk in his deep love for his mother and faith in
God; even old Teddy Bear, poor lost creature, in his sublime devotion to
duty, protecting the woman he had vowed once at the marriage altar that
he would protect; and, most of all"--Jerry's voice was soft and low--"a
sturdy, brave young farmer has helped me by his respect for honest labor
and his willingness to sacrifice for others.

"Joe"--Jerry spoke more softly still--"when you said good-by the other
night in the storm, you told me that if I ever wanted you I'd find you
down beyond the blowout. The word was like a blow in the face then. But
to-night I left Cousin Gene up at New Eden and came here to find you,
because _I want you_."

With all of Jim Swaim's power to estimate values written in her firm
mouth and chin, but with Lesa Swaim's love