"Why, of course!" Harriet hesitated, not wanting to hurt her brother's feelings by being too critical. "But where do you keep the food and such things? Is it safe to go away like this and leave it all open?" "Sure. Who'd steal a few blankets and grub? My nearest neighbor is eight miles away and nobody much passes except cow punchers and sheepmen and they're honest, generally speaking." Harriet was silent a moment, slowly putting this picture in place of the one imagination had painted. "But won't the cows and sheep get into the garden, spoil the hay or something?" Over Rob's sunburned face came an embarrassed smile. "Sorry to say there isn't any garden--yet." "Oh!... Then you haven't a real farm?" "No, indeed. Not what Easterners would call a farm, but it's worth a lot. It's this way. You see those hills we're climbing up to? Well, my place is over on the other side of them, a quarter section of government land that looks about like this; covered with sagebrush and bunch grass, but I've got some good springs. That's what makes my land worth something. There are thousands of acres of government land like this open to homesteaders, but worthless because there's no water. So the man who owns water, by fencing it, keeps stock away and controls the range near him. All this government land is free pasture; but it's no good without water. There is water--small springs and streams--scattered through the hills, enough to keep a little place, forty acres or so. Those are what people from the East keep coming in and taking up. Men will homestead so long as they can find water, for there's plenty of good land." "I see," Harriet said slowly, gazing ahead over the interminable miles of gray-green brush and bright, new, wild grass to the jagged, black lava summit of the foothills. "But why didn't you take some land down here?" she asked, with a gesture toward the green-and-gold oasis made by the irrigated land around them. "Oh, this costs more. The land is cheap but the irrigation water is brought in and you have to pay a lot for that. Besides, this isn't a stock country and that's what I'm after. A fellow ought to make good with all that free range." Harriet made no answer and for several minutes they rode in silence, the creak of the wagon suggesting many things.