“Yes, that’s it. That piece of paper is the homestead entry of Jennie Ross--section twenty, southeast quarter, range twenty-six, Mount Diablo meridian, which happens to be this identical and specified piece of alfalfa. This is government land, Mr. Holman, even if you did happen to have it covered up. It was open for entry and belonged to any one who would properly file on it and live up to the conditions specified by the government. Arthur Ross discovered it on the books at the land office and Jennie Ross filed on it. Not only that; but they secured a surveyor to direct them to the land. By a mere accident they happened to stop at your ranch house. And because you did not wish to lose the land, even if you had to steal it, you bribed the surveyor to locate them on my hopeless piece of desolation out there in the desert. You knew that if you could keep them from establishing residence for six months you could have a dummy file a contest and cheat them out of their rights. You have even gone as far as violence. I don’t know what your lawyer will call it; but I do know that our good old Uncle Sam looks upon every homesteader as his own private ward and goes after those who interfere with them almighty hard. How about it, Mr. Marshal?” The marshal was looking through the door. Pop Mobray was by his side. Billy grinned. “Nice little round-up we’re havin’. Eh, Holman?” A few minutes later the president of the Holman Land and Water Company was on his way to deposit bail, unroll red tape and fatten his lawyers in the slow, unceasing roll of government justice. When they were gone Billy turned to Arthur Ross. “Go up and tell Jennie to come down and start her dream on a real piece of land. Tell her I want her to pardon me for switching papers on her while she was looking at her pies. And thank her for that piece of pie.” And when Arthur Ross was gone he took a stub pencil from his pocket and wrote upon the side of the pump house: Where there’s more of singing and less of sighing, Where there’s more of giving, and less of buying, Where a man makes friends without half trying, That’s where the West begins. “Gosh,” he said, “a girl who sticks up a piece like that sure needs a square deal. It’s real poetry. I’d like to meet the man who wrote it.” THE END [Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the October 20, 1928 issue of Argosy All-Story Weekly magazine.]