ation
to make this a farming community. And it looked lots more impossible then
than this looks to me now. What's to prevent a metropolis risin' right
here where a decade and a half ago there wasn't nothing but bare
prairie?"

The appeal was forceful, and the very men who had stood like heroes
against hardships and had fought poverty with a grim, unyielding
will-power, the same men fell now before Darley Champers' smooth advances.

"Our company's chartered with no end of stock for sale now that in six
months will be out of sight above par and can't be bought for no price.
It's your time to invest now. You can easy mortgage your farms to raise
the money, seein' you can knock the mortgage off so quick and have
abundance left over, if you use your heads 'stead of your tired legs to
make money out of your land."

Cyrus Bennington and Todd Stewart and Jim Shirley, with others, were
sitting upright with alert faces now. Booms were making men rich all over
Kansas. Why should prosperity not come to this valley as well? It was not
impossible, surely. Only the unpleasant memory of Champers' holding back
the supplies in the days when the grasshopper was a burden would intrude
on the minds of the company tonight. Champers was shrewd to remember also,
and he played his game daringly as well as cautiously.

"Maybe some of you fellows haven't felt right toward me sometimes," he
said. "I hate to tell it now, but justice is justice. The truth is, it was
a friend of yours who advised me not to let any supplies come your way,
time of the grasshopper raid. I listened to him then and didn't know no
better'n to be run by him till I see his scheme to kill Wykerton an' build
a town for hisself. He'll deny it now, declare he never done it, and he'll
not do a thing for your town down here. See if he does. But it's Gawd's
truth, he held me back so's he could run you his way. It's your turn to
listen to me now and believe me, too."

And well they listened, especially the men who still owed John Jacobs for
the loan of 1874.

"You can have a boom right here that'll make you all rich men inside of a
year. Why not turn capitalists yourselves for a while, you hard-working
farmers. Money is easy and credit long, now. Take your chance at it and
make five hundred per cent on your investments. I'm ready to take
subscriptions for stock in this new town right now. Why not stop this
snail's pace of earnin' and go to livin' like gentlemen--like some
Car