ylock, sure enough," Asher said with a smile.
"I wish Jim would take advantage of you and quit his talking about the
boom and his dreams of what it might do for him."

"How soon will you be platting your Sunflower Ranch into town lots for the
new town that I hear is to be started down your way?" John Jacobs
inquired.

"Town lots do not appeal to me, Jacobs," Asher replied. "I'm a
slow-growing Buckeye, I'll admit, but I can't see anything but mushrooms
in these towns out West where there is no farming community about them.
I've waited and worked a good while; I'm willing to work and wait a while
longer. Some of my dreams have come true. I'll hold to my first position,
even if I don't get rich so fast."

"You are level-headed," Jacobs assured him. "You notice I have not turned
an acre in on this boom. Why? I'm a citizen of Kansas. And while I like to
increase my property, you know my sect bears that reputation--"Jacobs
never blushed for his Jewish origin--"I want to keep on living somewhere.
Why not here? Why do the other fellows out of their goods, as we Jews are
always accused of doing, if it leaves me no customer to buy? I want
farmers around my town, not speculators who work a field from hand to
hand, but leave it vacant at last. It makes your merchant rich today but
bankrupt in a dead town tomorrow. I'm a merchant by calling."

"Horace Greeley said thirty years ago that the twin curses of Kansas were
the land agent and the one-horse politician," Asher observed.

"You are a grub, Aydelot. You have no ambition at all. Why, I've heard
your name mentioned favorably several times for the legislature next
winter," Jacobs insisted jokingly.

"Which reminds me of that rhyme of Hosea Bigelow:

If you're arter folks o' gumption
You've a darned long row to hoe.

"I'm not an office seeker," Asher replied.

"Do I understand you won't sell lots off that ranch of yours to start a
new town, and you won't run for the legislature when you're dead sure to
be elected. May I ask how you propose to put in the fall after wheat
harvest?" Jacobs asked, with a twinkle in his black eyes.

"I propose to break ground for wheat again, and to experiment with
alfalfa, the new hay product, and to take care of that Aydelot grove and
build the Aydelot lake in the middle of it. And I'll be supplying the
wheat market and banking checks for hay one of these years when your town
starters will be hunting cle