Pink eyed him attentively, and suddenly his dimples stood
deep. "All right, I'm It," he surrendered.

"It'd be a sin not to fall for a yarn like that, Andy. I
expect you made it all up outa your own head, but that's all
right. It's a pleasure to be fooled by a genius like you.
I'll go raising turnips and cabbages myself."

By golly, you couldn't raise nothing but hell up on that dry
bench," Slim observed ponderously. "There ain't any water.
What's the use uh talking foolish?"

"They're going to tackle it, just the same," Andy pointed out
patiently.

"Well, by golly, if you ain't just lyin' to hear yourself,
that there graftin' bunch had oughta be strung up!"

"Sure, they had. Nobody's going to argue about that. But
seeing we can't do that, the next best thing is to beat them
to it. If they came out here with their herd of pilgrims and
found the land all took up--" Andy smiled hypnotically upon
the goggling group.

"Haw-haw-haw-w!" bawled Big Medicine. "It'd be wuth it, by
cripes!"

"Yeah--it would, all right. If that talk Andy's been giving
us is straight, about grazing the land instead uh working