quipped to farm. But
they were still in the minority. They picked up handfuls of the earth
that the locators turned over with spades, let it sift through their
fingers and pronounced it good. A rich loam, not so heavy or black as
the soil back east, but better adapted, perhaps, to the climate. Aside
from the farmers nobody seemed to know or care anything about the soil
or precipitation. And, ironically enough, it occurred to no one to ask
about the water supply.

"The land back east is too high-priced," the city laborer declared, "we
can never hope to own any of it."

"We'd rather risk the hazards of a raw country," said the tenant farmer,
"than be tenants always."

"We'll sell our eastern land at a high price," said the landowners, "and
improve new land."

"My mother took in washing to save money," said an earnest-faced boy,
"so I could make this trip. But if I win a whole quarter-section (and
how big a quarter-section looked to a city dweller!) I'll make a good
home for her."

A middle-aged widow from Keokuk told the group about her: "I mortgaged
my cottage to come. The boys are growing up and it's their only chance
to own land."

Others in the group nodded their heads. "Yes, land is solid!"

Leaning heavily on his cane a little old man with a long white mustache
and sharp eyes denounced the lottery method. "'Taint right, 'taint.
Don't give a feller a chanct. Look at me with my rheumatiz and I got as
good a chanct as any of 'em--brains nor legs don't count in this. Now in
the Oklahomy Run ..." And he told about the Oklahoma Run of almost a
generation before, when speed and strategy were necessary if one were to
be first on the land to stake a claim. But the Oklahoma Run, for all its
drama and its violence, dwindled in importance beside these Drawings
with their fabulous areas and their armies of people.

Across the prairie came the sound of horses' hoofs and the heavy
rumbling of a wagon. A locator with a hayrack full of seekers was coming
at a reckless pace, not stopping for the trails. At the reservation
gate he brought the team to a quick stop that almost threw his
passengers off the wagon. Some of them were so stiff and sore they
couldn't get off their cushion of hay; others were unable to stand after
they got up. But the locator was not disturbed by a little thing like
that. He waved his right arm, taking in at one sweep the vacant expanse
to the rim of the horizon and shouted:

"Here's your land, fol