Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/192

 cheerfulness and tried to unload their holdings on any chance stranger.

A trickle of water came through the ditch that had been scratched in the earth from the mountains to some three miles beyond Prouty. Nearly every head-gate the length of it had been the scene of a bloody battle where the ranchers fought each other with irrigating shovels for their rights. And, after all, it was seldom worth the gore and effort, for the trickle generally stopped altogether in August when they needed it. If the flow did not stop at the intake it broke out somewhere below and flooded somebody. If the sides did not give way because of the moisture loosening the soil, the rats and prairie dogs conspired to ruin Prouty by tunneling into the banks. And if by a miracle "the bone and sinew" of the community raised one cutting of alfalfa, the proceeds went to the Security State Bank, or Abram Pantin, to keep up their 12 percent, interest.

When the route to the Coast was shortened by one of the state's railroads and Prouty found itself on the cutoff, it was delirious with joy, but it regained its balance when the fast trains not only did not stop, but seemed to speed up instead of slackening; while the local which brought any prospective investor deposited him in a frame of mind which was such that it was seldom possible to remove his prejudice against the country.

These were the conditions one spring day when the buds that had not already burst were bursting and Mr. Teeters dashed into Prouty. "Dashed" is not too strong a word to describe his arrival, for the leaders of his fourhorse team were running away and the wheelers were, at least, not lagging. It was obvious to those familiar with Mr. Teeters' habits that he was en route to the station to meet incoming passengers. This was proclaimed