“And they won out. I’m not so foolish after all. When they came out here, they took the prairies as Nature had left them, grass-covered and waiting. I’m taking them as the boom left them, weed-covered and waiting. I’ll earn the interest myself and make the land pay the principal and I know exactly how it will do it, too.”
“Tell me how,” Thaine demanded.
“It’s no dream. I got the idea out of a Coburn book last winter,” Leigh replied.
“You mean the State Agricultural Report of Secretary Coburn? Funny place to hunt for inspiration; queer gospel, I’d say,” Thaine declared. “Why didn’t you go to the census report of 1890, or Radway’s Ready Relief Almanac, or the Unabridged Dictionary?”
“All right, you despiser of small things. It was just an agricultural report full of tables and statistics and comparative values and things that I happened on one day when things were looking blackest, and right in the middle I found a page that Foster Dwight Coburn must have put in just for me, I guess. There was a little sketch of an 250 alfalfa plant with its long good roots, and just one paragraph beside it with the title, ‘The Silent Subsoiler.’”
“That sounds well,” Thaine observed. He was listening eagerly in spite of his joking, and his mind was alert to the girl’s project.
“Mr. Coburn said,” Leigh went on, “that there are some silent subsoilers that do their work with ease and as effectually as any plow ever hitched, and the great one of these is alfalfa; that it is a reservoir of wealth that takes away the fear of protest and over-draft.”
“Well, and what if Coburn is right?” Thaine queried.
“Listen, now. I planned how I’d get back that old claim of Uncle Jim’s; how I’d pay some money down and borrow the rest, and begin seeding it to alfalfa. Then I’ll churn and feed chickens and make little sketches of water lilies, maybe, and pay the interest and let the alfalfa pay off the principal. I haven’t any father or mother, Thaine; Uncle Jim is all I have. He hasn’t always been successful in business ventures, but he’s always been honest. He has nothing to blush for, nothing to keep hidden. I know we’ll win now, for that writing of Foster Dwight Coburn’s is true. Don’t try to discourage me, Thaine,” she looked up with shining eyes.
“You are a silent little subsoiler yourself, Leigh, doing your work effectually. Of course you’ll win, you brave girl. I wish it was a different kind of work, though.”