Nevertheless, we proceeded to Wessington Springs, where we met my brother, J.B. Reese, who took us out the next day to see the land he had bought and the country generally. We went out some 15-16 miles southwest of Wessington Springs, and if the land had seemed poor to us before, now it seemed only worse. We passed a considerable number of empty houses which indicated that the inhabitants had been forced to abandon the land on which these stood. It was in August and dry so that the prairie was quite seared over. Then, too, the last big prairie fire which ravaged this section had just gone thru a couple of years before, destroying the greater number of the buildings on the many abandoned homesteads and also burning the very roots out of the ground. What grass was left, or rather roots, stood in tufts with a big vacant space of ground between these tufts. My partner did not express himself much as to the new country, but what he thought about it can be guessed by the fact that he wanted none of it for his own. However, I bought a quarter section of it adjoining the tract which J.B. Reese had already bought, before returning home, thinking it might do for pasture. I paid less than $5.00 per acre for it, so I felt that I could not lose much anyway. May we digress for a moment here and point out the history of the original homesteaders of this section we are just describing, for it is full of interest and has also not a few of the tragedies of the prairie. This part of the state has seen more than the average of the disappointments incident to pioneer life. It has been the grave-yard of many bright hopes and furnished a burial place instead of a building place for not a few pioneers of the prairie. The valley between Templeton to the north and Crow Lake to the south, with some of the adjacent land as well, was settled mostly by people from New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania in the early eighties. These people had some means, according to the standards of those times; were above the average pioneer in education and in general started in to build homes embodying not merely necessary shelter but even refinement and comforts. They planted trees, both shade and fruit trees; also flowers and shrubs. The first years of their settlement were sufficiently wet and the crops were correspondingly good, some getting upward of 30 bushels of wheat per acre on the newly broken ground. This encouraged the settlers even to going into considerable debt for equipment to carry on larger farm operations. Land rose in value from free homesteads to $300.00 to $500.00 per quarter. Then came the dry years of 1893-'4-'5 and others as well of small or no crops. Not only no crop, but all the wells dried up so there was the greatest scarcity of water for man and beast. Many of these people were heavily in debt and it was almost impossible to borrow any more to tide over the emergency.