He was a youngish sort of fellow and he looked intelligent and he had good manners. He told me his name was Rickard and that he was a New York newspaperman on vacation and had dropped into the valley on his way out west to check some information.
It was the first time, so far as I knew, that the valley had ever been of any interest news-wise and I said so. I said we never did much here to get into the news.
"It's no scandal," Rickard told me, "if that is what you're thinking. It's just a matter of statistics."
There are a lot of times when I don't catch a situation as quickly as I should, being a sort of deliberate type, but it seems to me now that as soon as he said statistics I could see it coming.
"I did a series of farm articles a few months back," said Rickard, "and to get my information I had to go through a lot of government statistics. I never got so sick of anything in my entire life."
"And?" I asked, not feeling too well myself.
"I found some interesting things about this valley," he went on. "I remember that I didn't catch it for a while. Went on past the figures for a ways. Almost missed the significance, in fact. Then I did a doubletake and backed up and looked at them again. The full story wasn't in that report, of course. Just a hint of something. So I did some more digging and came up with other facts."
I tried to laugh it off, but he wouldn't let me.
"Your weather, for one thing," he said. "Do you realize you've had perfect weather for the past ten years?"
"The weather's been pretty good," I admitted.