ton, the first speaker, broke in
dolefully. "Joking isn't going to give us food and clothes and fuel till
crop time comes again--if it ever does."

"I'm not suffering for extra clothes. What I wear now is a burden," Todd
Stewart declared.

"Well, gentlemen." Darley Champers took the floor. "What are you going to
do? That's what brought me here today. I knowed I'd find you all here.
When I sent some of you fellows into this blasted Sahara, I was honest. I
thought Grass River was a real stream, not a weed patch and a stone
outcrop. I'd seen water in it, as I can prove by Aydelot. Remember, when
we met down by the bend here, one winter day?"

"Yes, I remember," Asher replied.

"Well, I just come by there and there ain't a drop of water in that deep
bend, no more'n in my hat." Champers plumped his hat down on the floor
with the words. "And the creek, on Stewart's testimony, is a blasted
fissure in the earth."

"I always said when that bend went dry, I'd leave the country, but I
can't," Jim Shirley said doggedly.

"Why not?" Champers inquired.

"Because I can't throw away the only property I have in the world, and I
haven't the means to get away, let alone start up anywhere else."

"We're all in the same boat," Bennington declared.

"Same boat, every fellow rocking it, too, and no water to drown in if we
fall out. We're in the queerest streak of luck yet developed," Todd
Stewart observed.

"Let's take a vote, then, and see how many of us really have no visible
means of support and couldn't walk out of here at all. Let's have a show
of hands," Jim Shirley proposed.

"How did you decide?" Champers asked, as the hands dropped.

His eyes were on Asher Aydelot, who had not voted.

"Didn't you see? Everybody, except Asher there, is nailed fast to the
gumbo," Stewart declared.

Darley Champers looked Asher Aydelot straight in the eyes, and nobody
could have said that pity or dislike or surprise controlled the man's
mind, for something of all three were in that look. Then he said:

"Gentlemen, I know your condition just as well as you do. You're in a
losing game, and it's stay and starve, or--but they ain't no 'or.' Now,
I'll advance money tomorrow on every claim held here and take it and
assume the mortgage. Not that they are worth it. Oh, Lord, no. I'll be
land-logged, and it's out of kindness to you that I'm willin' to stretch
them fellers I represent in the East. But I'll take chances. I'll help
each feller of