Joe Thomson still stood leaning against the oak limb. The confusion of meeting this handsome stranger had passed. He was in his own territory now, talking of things of which he knew. He knew, too, how to put his thoughts into good, expressive English. "There are beautiful farms up the river--ranches, I mean. What has changed this prairie to such an awful place?" Jerry questioned, eagerly. "Eastern capital and lack of brains and energy," Joe answered her. "It is just a blowout, that's all. It began in that sandy strip in that low place along over there by the railroad, where, as I say, some old river-bed, maybe the Sage Brush, might have been long ago before it made that big bend in its course up by my buildings. A crazy, money-mad fool from back East came out here and plowed up all this ground one dry season, a visionary fellow who dreamed of getting a fortune from the land without any labor. And when the thing began to look like real work he cut the whole game, just like a lot of other fools have done, and went back East, leaving all these torn, unsodded acres a plaything for the winds. There were three or four dry seasons right after that, and the soil all went to dust and blew away. But the sand grew, and multiplied, and surged over the face of this particular spot of the Lord's earth until it has come to be a tyrant of power, covering all this space and spreading slowly northward up over the next claim. That's mine." "What is it doing to your land?" Jerry asked. "Ruining it," Joe replied, calmly. "And you don't go mad?" the girl cried, impulsively. "We don't go mad on the Sage Brush till the last resort, and we don't often come to that. When we can't do one thing, out West, we do another. That's all there is to it." The smile was in his eyes again as Joe said this. "Do you know who owns this ground now?" Jerry tried to ask as carelessly as possible. "An estate back in Pennsylvania, I believe," Joe replied. "What is it worth?" Jerry's voice was hardly audible. "Look at it. What do _you_ think it is worth, as a whole, or cut up into town lots for a summer resort?" Joe demanded. In spite of his calmness there was a harshness in his voice, and his eyes were stern. Jerry twisted her white hands helplessly. "I don't know--anything worth knowing," she said, faintly, looking full into the young man's face for the first time. Afterward she remembered that he was powerfully built, that his eyes were dark, and that his teeth showed white and even, as he repeated, with a smile: "You don't know anything worth knowing. You don't quite look the part." "Why don't you answer my question?" Back of the light in Jerry's eyes Joe saw that the tears were waiting, and something in her face hurt him strangely. "I think this claim is not worth--an effort," he declared, frankly, looking out at the wind-heaved ridges of sand. "What brought you here to look at it, then?" Jerry demanded.