"No advertising or selling machinery, and not enough money to put in an irrigation system, and no credit. They can't afford to wait."
Rapp considered. "Plenty of water for these lands?"
"That's a question," York admitted. "The main water down that way is a river called the Coldstream. The ranchers have their water records, which of course take precedence of any we might file. There may be enough—I don't know. That will have to be ascertained. But if this stuff can be irrigated it can be sold. Our land department will look after that."
"Almost any sort of an irrigated gold brick can be sold nowadays," said Rapp cynically. "I admit that you have some pretty fair con men in your land department."
"We never put anything on the market that wasn't a perfectly legitimate proposition," said York, with dignity.
"Depends on what you call 'legitimate,'" said Rapp. "I've read some of your land advertising. If you sold shares by means of a prospectus no more truthful, you'd do time for it. You know blame well you unload your stuff on people who depend on selected photographs and pretty pen pictures of annual yields per acre. Of course, any man who buys land without seeing it deserves exactly the sort of land he gets. I'm not criticising at all—merely pointing out that I know the rudiments of the game."
"Help us play it, then," said York. "Dig into Prairie Southern, and see what we get for our money."
William Bates Rapp did so. By various complicated and technical documents he grafted the moribund Prairie Southern upon the vigorous trunk of Western Airline, after which he washed his hands of the operation by a carefully worded letter accompanying a huge bill of costs, and dismissed the matter from his mind; for it was only one transaction among a score of more important ones.
Later, the experts of the Airline descended on the carcass of poor old Prairie Southern, to see what had best be done with the meat upon its bones, and the result was fairly satisfactory. The traffic was inconsiderable, but showed signs of improvement. The land hunger was upon the people, frightened by the cry that cheap lands were almost at an end. Many were stampeded into buying worthless acres which they did not want, in the fear that if they delayed there would be nothing left to buy. Fake real-estate schemes—colonies, ten-acre orchard tracts, hen farms, orange groves, prune plantations—flourished over the width and length of a continent, and promoters reaped a harvest. Land with a legitimate basis of value doubled and trebled in price between seasons.
It was a period of inflation, of claim without proof, of discounting the future. Men raw from the city bought barren acres on which practical farmers had starved, in the expectation of making an easy, healthful living. And in this madness the lands of the old Prairie Southern grant, at one time supposed to be worthless, justified the foresight of Cromwell York by reaching a value in excess of even his expectations. For, given water, they were very good lands indeed, and Western Airline was prepared to sell them with a water guarantee.