ystem by which these Indians had survived in their unhealthy
environment.

"She may not look so bad when we go over her carefully," added Higgins.

"Thanks," said Payne. "Optimism is good medicine to sleep on. I'm
stung, of course. The Prairie Highlands Company sold this stuff to me
as virgin prairie sod ready for the plow. I discounted that by fifty
per cent, considering the low price. I knew enough about this land to
know, in spite of lying maps, faked soil reports and photographs, that
there would be some water here. I hired you because I was prepared for
a drainage proposition. But I didn't think they were crooked and nervy
enough to sell me a lake--that senator writing letters on his official
stationery."

"Maybe you've got on the wrong tract?"

"You know better; you went over the maps yourself. No; they've got the
crust to show this hammock in their photographs; I recognized it at
once. They showed it with fat, black grassland stretching away on
every side of it. They've got photographs of a town that should be
located here, and of roads and ditches and farms. Their crop
exhibit--crops from Prairie Highlands--is a wonder: Corn, sugar cane,
potatoes, grass. Fifty per cent I discounted it; one hundred per cent
would have been right."

"They got soil experts to write reports on it," growled Higgins. "Or
at least, to sign them. Those are pretty big names on your papers, men
with big reputations. How could they do it?"

"They haven't been in here," said Payne bitterly. "The thing is
beginning to get a little clear. Nobody's been in here who wasn't
wanted. It's simple to keep them out, with the river the only trail to
come in by; so they've built up a fiction about the district, and
nobody's been here to check up on it--until now."

"Wonder how they got those soil men to put their names on the reports?"

"Senator Fairclothe, I suppose. You can get men from Washington who
can't be got any other way. What I'm wondering about is who's big
enough to get him."

"What!"

"Did you ever know of a politician with a big name who was ever
anything but a figurehead in a deal of this sort?"

"I guess you're right."

"It's the name and the reputation and the man's official standing
that's valuable. Senator Fairclothe may be crooked--I don't say he is;
but he isn't a fool politically, at least. No man gets a stranglehold
on his state and an inside standing in Washington and keeps it year
after yea