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Wagon caravans moved on from the railroad into the interior, many going as far as fifty, sixty, a hundred miles over a trailless desert. Homesteaders who had no money and nothing to haul, came through in dilapidated vehicles and lived in tents until they got jobs and earned money to buy lumber. A few came in automobiles. There were more cars seen in the moving caravans now.
This is a sure-enough-always-no-man's-land, a jumping-off place for all the earth too high for irrigation farming, too arid for any other kind of farming, and so an unclaimed land. In the twenty-mile drive, you will see, perhaps, three homesteaders' shanties, where settlers have fenced off a square and tried ranching; but water is too deep for boring.
One of us would light the print-shop lamp, make out the papers, take the money, and stumble back to bed. A sign, "CLOSED," or "NEVER CLOSED," would have been equally ineffective in stopping the night movement on the Strip. Homesteaders living miles away came after the long day's work to put in their proving-up notices.
A large section of it, which was once marked on the map as the Great American Desert, had been left untouched, a dead possession and a problem to the government, who did not know what use to make of it until the homesteaders pushed west. In the past two or three years, 200,000 homesteaders had taken up claims, filing on more than 40,000,000 acres, making a solid coverage of 70,000 square miles.
There was a dash of hoofs behind them, and a man who rode like a sack of bran came bouncing up, excitement over his large face. "What's up, Macdonald where're you off to?" he inquired. Macdonald told him in a word, riding forward as he spoke. He introduced the stranger as a newspaper correspondent from Chicago, who had arrived at the homesteaders' camp the evening past.
But the homesteaders, the permanent settlers, the men who took up each his own farm on which he lived and brought up his family, these represented from the National standpoint the most desirable of all possible users of, and dwellers on, the soil. Their advent meant the breaking up of the big ranches; and the change was a National gain, although to some of us an individual loss.
Meanwhile the weeks and months passed, the number of homesteaders increased, more and more cattle dotted the range. When winter came some of the homesteaders, including Pan and his mother, moved into Littleton to send their children to school. Pan's first teacher was Emma Jones. He liked her immediately which was when she called to take him to school. Pan was not used to strangers.
Secretly Hans admired Jacobs for his business ability, and all men respected him for a gentleman. Hence it was no small disappointment to the brewery owner to find when Jacobs returned to Kansas that he did not mean to open a business in Wykerton. Instead, he loaned his money to Grass River homesteaders.
Those homesteaders were men of rare courage and unbending persistency in the ordinary affairs of life, but three days of empty pursuit of this monster left them out of heart. The name of Mark Thorn in itself was sufficient to move a thrill of terror and repulsion.
They stopped short, swung off their ponies, three girl homesteaders. They rode astride, wore plain shirtwaists and divided skirts. Two of them wore cheap straw hats much like those worn by farmers in the fields everywhere. They swung from their saddles as easily as though they wore breeches and boots. "How did you learn we were here?"
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