II

OUT OF THE DUST

AT thirty-four, Martin was still unmarried, and though he had not
travelled far on that strange road to affluence which for some
seems a macadamized boulevard, but for so many, like himself, a
rough cow-path, he had done better than the average farmer of
Fallon County. To be sure, this was nothing over which to gloat.
A man who received forty cents a bushel for wheat was satisfied;
corn sold at twenty-eight cents, and the hogs it fattened in
proportion. But his hundred and sixty acres were clear from debt,
four thousand dollars were on deposit drawing three per cent in
The First State Bank--the old Bank of Fallon, now incorporated
with Robinson as its president. In the pasture, fourteen sows
with their seventy-five spring pigs rooted beside the sleek herd
of steers fattening for market; the granary bulged with corn; two
hundred bushels of seed wheat were ready for sowing; his
machinery was in excellent condition; his four Percheron mares
brought him, each, a fine mule colt once a year; and the well
never went dry, even in August. Martin was--if one discounted the
harshness of the life, the dirt, the endless duties and the
ever-pressing chores--a Kansas plutocrat.

One fiery July day, David Robinson drew up before Martin's shack.
The little old box-house was still unpainted without and
unpapered within. Two chairs, a home-made table with a Kansas
City Star as a cloth, a sheetless bed, a rough cupboard, a stove
and floors carpeted with accumulations of untidiness completed