Megory became my postoffice address after Calias had moved to its new location, and about that time the first rural mail route was established on the reservation. Megory boasted of this. The other things it boasted of, was its great farming territory. For miles in every direction tributary to the town, the land was ideal for farming purposes, and at the beginning of the bitter rivalry between the two towns, Megory had the big end of the farm trade. They could see nothing else but Megory, which helped the town's business considerably. CHAPTER XIX IN THE VALLEY OF THE KEYA PAHA. THE RIVALS. THE VIGILANTS Nothing is more essential to the upbuilding of the small western town, than a good agricultural territory, and this was where Calias found its first handicap. When it had moved to its new location, scores of investors had flocked to the town, paying the highest prices that had ever been paid for lots in a new country town, of its kind, in the central west. Twenty-five miles south of the two towns, where a sand stream known as the Keya Paha wends its way, is a fertile valley. It had been settled thirty years before by eastern people, who hauled their hogs and drove their cattle and sheep fifty miles in a southerly direction, to a railroad. Although the valley could not be surpassed in the production of corn, wheat, oats, and alfalfa, the highlands on either side are great mountains of sand, which produce nothing but a long reddish grass, that stock will not eat after it reaches maturity, and which stands in bunches, with the sand blown from around its roots, to such an extent that riding or driving over it is very difficult. These hills rise to heights until they resemble the Sierras, and near the top, on the northwest slope of each, are cave-like holes where the strong winds have blown a squeegee. The wagon road to the railway on the south was sandy and made traveling over it slow and hazardous by the many pits and dunes. Therefore, it is to be seen, when the C. & R.W. pushed its line through Megory County, everything that had been going to the road on the south began immediately to come to the road on the north--where good hard roads made the traveling much easier, and furthermore, it was only half the distance. Keya Paha County was about as lonely a place as I had ever seen. After the sun went down, the coyotes from the adjacent sand hills, in a series of mournful howls, filled the air with a noise which echoed and re-echoed throughout the valley, like the music of so many far-away steam calliopes and filled me with a cold, creepy feeling. For thirty years these people had heard no other sound save the same monotonous howls and saw only each other. The men went to Omaha occasionally with cattle, but the women and children knew little else but Keya Paha County.