The Flying U's Last Stand. B. M. Bower
nor very much about ranching. Oh, yes—he lived in this country, and he knew THAT pretty well, but—
“The point is right here,” said Florence Grace Hallman, laying her pink fingertips upon his arm and glancing behind her to make sure that they were practically alone—their immediate neighbors being still in the diner. “I'm speaking merely upon impulse—which isn't a wise thing to do, ordinarily. But—well, your eyes vouch for you, Mr. Green, and we women are bound to act impulsively sometimes—or we wouldn't be women, would we?” She laughed—rather, she gave a little, infectious giggle, and took away her fingers, to the regret of Andy who liked the feel of them on his forearm.
“The point is here. I've recognized the fact, all along, that we need a man stationed right here, living in the country, who will meet prospective homesteaders and talk farming; keep up their enthusiasm; whip the doubters into line; talk climate and soil and the future of the country; look the part, you understand.”
“So I look like a rube, do I?” Andy's lips quirked a half smile at her.
“No, of course you don't!” She laid her fingers on his sleeve again, which was what Andy wanted—what he had intended to bait her into doing; thereby proving that, in some respects at least, he amply justified Hiss Hallman in her snap judgment of him.
“Of course you don't look like a rube! I don't want you to. But you do look Western—because you are Western to the bone Besides, you look perfectly dependable. Nobody could look into your eyes and even think of doubting the truth of any statement you made to them.” Andy snickered mentally at that though his eyes never lost their clear candor. “And,” she concluded, “being a bona fide resident of the country, your word would carry more weight than mine if I were to talk myself black in the face!”
“That's where you're dead wrong,” Andy hastened to correct her.
“Well, you must let me have my own opinion, Mr. Green. You would be convincing enough, at any rate. You see, there is a certain per cent of—let us call it waste effort—in this colonization business. We have to reckon on a certain number of nibblers who won't bite”—Andy's honest, gray eyes widened a hair's breadth at the frankness of her language—“when they get out here. They swallow the folders we send out, but when they get out here and see the country, they can't see it as a rich farming district, and they won't invest. They go back home and knock, if they do anything.
“My idea is to stop that waste; to land every homeseeker that boards our excursion trains. And I believe the way to do that is to have the right kind of a man out here, steer the doubtfuls against him—and let his personality and his experience do the rest. They're hungry enough to come, you see; the thing is to keep them here. A man that lives right here, that has all the earmarks of the West, and is not known to be affiliated with our Syndicate (you could have rigs to hire, and drive the doubtfuls to the tract)—don't you see what an enormous advantage he'd have? The class I speak of are the suspicious ones—those who are from Missouri. They're inclined to want salt with what we say about the resources of the country. Even our chemical analysis of the soil, and weather bureau dope, don't go very far with those hicks. They want to talk with someone who has tried it, you see.”
“I—see,” said Andy thoughtfully, and his eyes narrowed a trifle. “On the square, Miss Hallman, what are the natural advantages out here—for farming? What line of talk do you give those come-ons?”
Miss Hallman laughed and made a very pretty gesture with her two ringed hands. “Whatever sounds the best to them,” she said. “If they write and ask about spuds we come back with illustrated folders of potato crops and statistics of average yields and prices and all that. If it's dairy, we have dairy folders. And so on. It isn't any fraud—there ARE sections of the country that produce almost anything, from alfalfa to strawberries. You know that,” she challenged.
“Sure. But I didn't know there was much tillable land left lying around loose,” he ventured to say.
Again Miss Hallman made the pretty gesture, which might mean much or nothing. “There's plenty of land 'lying around loose,' as you call it. How do you know it won't produce, till it has been tried?”
“That's right,” Andy assented uneasily. “If there's water to put on it—”
“And since there is the land, our business lies in getting people located on it. The towns and the railroads are back of us. That is, they look with favor upon bringing settlers into the country. It increases the business of the country—the traffic, the freights, the merchants' business, everything.”
Andy puckered his eyebrows and looked out of the window upon a great stretch of open, rolling prairie, clothed sparely in grass that was showing faint green in the hollows, and with no water for miles—as he knew well—except for the rivers that hurried through narrow bottom lands guarded by high bluffs that were for the most part barren. The land was there, all right. But—
“What I can't see,” he observed after a minute during which Miss Florence Hallman studied his averted face, “what I can't see is, where do the settlers get off at?”
“At Easy street, if they're lucky enough,” she told him lightly. “My business is to locate them on the land. Getting a living off it is THEIR business. And,” she added defensively, “people do make a living on ranches out here.”
“That's right,” he agreed again—he was finding it very pleasant to agree with Florence Grace Hallman. “Mostly off stock, though.”
“Yes, and we encourage our clients to bring out all the young stock they possibly can; young cows and horses and—all that sort of thing. There's quantities of open country around here, that even the most optimistic of homeseekers would never think of filing on. They can make out, all right, I guess. We certainly urge them strongly to bring stock with them. It's always been famous as a cattle country—that's one of our highest cards. We tell them—”
“How do you do that? Do you go right to them and TALK to them?”
“Yes, if they show a strong enough interest—and bank account. I follow up the best prospects and visit them in person. I've talked to fifty horny-handed he-men in the past month.”
“Then I don't see what you need of anyone to bring up the drag,” Andy told her admiringly. “If you talk to 'em, there oughtn't be any drag!”
“Thank you for the implied compliment. But there IS a 'drag,' as you call it. There's going to be a big one, too, I'm afraid—when they get out and see this tract we're going to work off this spring.” She stopped and studied him as a chess player studies the board.
“I'm very much tempted to tell you something I shouldn't tell,” she said at length, lowering her voice a little. “Remember, Andy Green was a very good looking man, and his eyes were remarkable for their clear, candid gaze straight into your own eyes. Even as keen a business woman as Florence Grace Hallman must be forgiven for being deceived by them. I'm tempted to tell you where this tract is. You may know it.”
“You better not, unless you're willing to take a chance,” he told her soberly. “If it looks too good, I'm liable to jump it myself.”
Miss Hallman laughed and twisted her red lips at him in what might be construed as a flirtatious manner. She was really quite taken with Andy Green. “I'll take a chance. I don't think you'll jump it. Do you know anything about Dry Lake, up above Havre, toward Great Falls—and the country out east of there, towards the mountains?”
The fingers of Andy Green closed into his palms. His eyes, however, continued to look into hers with his most guileless expression.
“Y-es—that is, I've ridden over it,” he acknowledged simply.
“Well—now this is a secret; at least we don't want those mossback ranchers in there to get hold of it too soon, though they couldn't really do anything, since it's all government land and the lease has only just run out. There's a high tract lying between the Bear Paws and—do you know where the Flying U ranch is?”
“About