As the two men melted into the darkness we closed the door reluctantly against the soft spring air. Strange that we had found prairie life dull!
One morning soon after the unexpected appearance of the Milwaukee cartoonist I awoke to find the prairie in blossom. Only in the spring is there color over that great expanse; but for a few weeks the grass is green and the wild flowers bloom in delicate beauty—anemones, tiny white and yellow and pink blossoms wherever the eye rests. I galloped to the print shop with the wind blowing through my hair, rejoicing in the sudden beauty, and found myself too much in holiday mood to get to work.
Suddenly I looked up from the type case to find an arresting figure in the doorway, a middle-aged man with an air of power and authority about him.
"I'm waiting for the stage," he said. "May I come in?"
I offered him the only chair there was—an upturned nail keg—and he sat down.
"Where do you come from?" he asked abruptly.
"St. Louis," I said.
"But why come out here to run a newspaper?"
"I didn't. I came to homestead with my sister, but the job was here."
Because he was amused at the idea, because the function of these frontier papers seemed unimportant to him, I began to argue the point, and finally, thoroughly aroused, described the possibilities which grew in my own mind as I discussed them. There was a tremendous job for the frontier newspaper to do, I pointed out. Did he know the extent of this great homestead movement and the future it promised? True, the frontier papers were small in size, but they could become a power in the development of this raw country.