out to protect the settlers against claim jumpers who are said to be
nesting there. This tampering with government lands is a criminal
offense, and it is understood that legal action will be pushed against
all offenders."

One afternoon some two weeks later there walked into the print shop a
man with an official manner about him. He called for the publisher of
the paper.

"What do you know about this?" he demanded, pointing to the article.
"What authority did you have for it?"

I was speechless. He was a Federal Agent.

"Well," I said at last, defiantly, "if the government is not furnishing
agents on the land to look after these things, it should."

And it did. The agent looked into the matter, claim-jumping quieted
down, there were fewer "spotters" swarming around, and soon, when their
six months of grace had expired, the Lucky Numbers were all on the
ground.

[Illustration]

VIII

EASY AS FALLING OFF A LOG

"Any old cayuse can enter a race," Bronco Benny remarked one day. "It's
coming in under the wire that counts."

Ida Mary and I had saddled ourselves with a newspaper, a post office, a
grocery store, an Indian trading post, and all the heavy labor of
hauling, delivery of mail and odd jobs that were entailed. We were
appalled to realize the weight of the responsibility we had assumed,
with every job making steady, daily demands on us, with the Ammons
finances to be juggled and stretched to cover constant demands on them.
And there was no turning back.

The Lucky Numbers were all settled on their claims. Already trails were
broken to the print shop from every direction. There was no time to
plan, no time in which to wonder how one was to get things done. The
important thing was to keep doing them. On the whole Strip there was not
a vacant quarter-section. Already a long beaten trail led past the
print-shop door north and south from Pierre to Presho; another crossed
the reservation east and west from McClure to the Indian tepees and the
rangeland beyond. Paths led in from all parts of the Strip like spokes,
with Ammons the hub around which the wheel of the reservation's
activities revolved.

From every section of the settlement the people gravitated to my claim;
they came with their needs, with their plans, with their questions. In
the first days we heard their needs rather than filled them, and the
store and print shop became a place for the exchange of ideas and news,
so that I was able to di