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 respect, MacKinnon offering to take care of Bill's suitcase and granger clothes until good luck might bring him back to Pawnee Bend.

Bill hoped he could get past Moore's place without being seen, although he doubted if Zora would recognize him in that outfit and riding a horse, which he could do well enough to get by with it. If he could make it along there about dusk it would suit him better. To further the desired condition he loitered along, stopping now and then to turn his eyes around the country, which looked better to him, now that he had a foot within the door, than it did when he was tramping back to Pawnee Bend with his heavy suitcase earlier in the afternoon.

The bigger the country and the fewer people it contained, the greater a man's chances in it, Bill thought, which was not an original observation, to be sure. His pioneer ancestors had been urged along to the unoccupied places by the same business reasoning for the past hundred years or so. A man who likes arm-room has that comfortable feeling when he stands alone. Liberty is the big chance to such a man. He plants it in the solitudes and nurtures it to vigorous fruition.

There would be a farmhouse on every section of that land one of these days, said Bill; as soon as they learned what to plant there and how to make it yield, the farmers would drop down on that big, empty country like blackbirds out of a tree. Then there would be demand for trees such as nurseryman never confronted before, it was so bare and unfriendly in its nakedness.