scared of fallin' off, you know."

She was in full sympathy with him. In her heart of hearts the forty
acres tugged much the harder. In her way, allowing for the difference
of a generation, her desire for spaciousness was as strong as her Uncle
Will's.

"Well, we're not going to stop here," she assured Billy. "We're going
in, not for forty acres, but for a hundred and sixty acres free from the
government."

"An' I guess the government owes it to us for what our fathers an'
mothers done. I tell you, Saxon, when a woman walks across the plains
like your mother done, an' a man an' wife gets massacred by the Indians
like my grandfather an' mother done, the government does owe them
something."

"Well, it's up to us to collect."

"An' we'll collect all right, all right, somewhere down in them redwood
mountains south of Monterey."

CHAPTER II

It was a good afternoon's tramp to Niles, passing through the town of
Haywards; yet Saxon and Billy found time to diverge from the main county
road and take the parallel roads through acres of intense cultivation
where the land was farmed to the wheel-tracks. Saxon looked with
amazement at these small, brown-skinned immigrants who came to the soil
with nothing and yet made the soil pay for itself to the tune of two
hundred, of five hundred, and of a thousand dollars an acre.

On every hand was activity. Women and children were in the fields as
well as men. The land was turned endlessly over and over. They seemed
never to let it rest. And it rewarded them. It must reward them, or
their children would not be able to go to school, nor would so many of
them be able to drive by in rattletrap, second-hand buggies or in stout
light wagons.

"Look at their faces," Saxon said. "They are happy and contented. They
haven't faces like the people in our neighborhood after the strikes
began."

"Oh, sure, they got a good thing," Billy agreed. "You can see it
stickin' out all over them. But they needn't get chesty with ME, I can
tell you that much--just because they've jiggerooed us out of our land
an' everything."

"But they're not showing any signs of chestiness," Saxon demurred.

"No, they're not, come to think of it. All the same, they ain't so wise.
I bet I could tell 'em a few about horses."

It was sunset when they entered the little town of Niles. Billy, who had
been silent for the last half mile, hesitantly ventured a suggestion.

"Say... I could put up for a room in the h