wasn't as calm as the average summer day. When O'Brien come back he says he'd seen madder men than George was at first, maybe, but he'd never seen a man worse scared before they got through.

Zurk had gone into a fitful sleep and Doc says not to disturb him, so O'Brien give me an envelop with some papers in it and says, "Give him these if he ever wakes up, and tell him Stevens come around pretty damned neat."

22

Well, Zurk did wake up and he woke up feelin' a little better. I whispered to him that George had come through. He smiled and says, "Mr. Mulberry, the field for higher education ain't been scratched yet."

The next afternoon I went down and found Zurk still on the improve, so I give him the envelop I had for him. He opened it and took out a piece of paper which he read over once or twice to himself. Then he raised up in bed and looked out the window, down to the cottonwoods along the creek, and in his eyes was the look of a child that's huntin' for his mother, if you get what I mean.

He broke the silence with, "Mr. O'Brien says in this note that he has taken the deed to town with him and will return it to me as soon as it is recorded."

"What deed's that?" I asks.

"The deed to what is known as the Holdsworth place. You know, that three hundred and twenty that Stevens owns along the riverchoice piece of ground and has good improvements. I took a deed to it in lieu of all damages, as Mr. O'Brien states in his letter," and he smiled in the queer way he had,

"But, Zurk," I says, "the Holdsworth place is the best half-section George owns. It's the best piece of ground in this valley-easy worth a hundred dollars an acre, if it's worth a cent. Are you aimin' to settle down here and farm?"

"Not yet, not yet," he says, very serious, "but you can't tell when the literary field may become overcrowded, and a man don't get shot onto a farm as good as that every day. And now, if you will be kind enough to call my commission-man, I would like to talk over a few business arrangements with him.”

I left and went back to the barn chucklin' to myself, and sayin' that Xerxes Bullock was one of the shrewdest business men that had ever struck Tumbleweed Valley. But it wasn't Zurk's business ability alone that deserved the neighborhood's undyin' admiration, as I was to learn later.

22

The next day me and Ma received an invitation. It was copied word for word from "The World's Universal Knowledge," exceptin' the names was changed. Sally Parsons told Ma it was. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens requested the pleasure of our company at the weddin' of their daughter, Lucy Abbey, to Richard Carlton Kent, at high noon on the followin' Tuesday, two weeks. It was wrote on Billy Debusk's most expensive letter-paper.

The weddin' turned out to be a howlin' success, there was no denyin' that. And the clothes the women. folks had on would of made the lilies of the field look plumb naked.

Zurk was there wearin' a new suit and one crutch. As soon as

the preacher finished sayin', “I pronounce you man and and wife," Zurk hobbled out and grabbed the bride by the hand.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he says in an impressive voice, "friends and neighbors, it is my privilege on this happy occasion, to present to the lovin' couple a weddin' present which I hope and trust will mean much to them through the long years of their married life.

"Due to the retirin' and modest nature of Mr. Stevens, he has made previous arrangements with me to undertake this happy task.

"I take great pleasure in presentin' to Mr. and Mrs. Kent, in behalf of the bride's father and mother, a deed to three hundred and twenty acres of land lyin' along the river, said farm known as the Holdsworth place."

Well, I'm tellin' you, everything was so quiet for a minute that I heard a hook pop on Lizzie Crane's basque. And George Stevens couldn't of looked more surprised if he'd of seen Jonah and the whale settin' right down there in the room havin' a sociable cup of coffee.

Then Lucy flung her arms around Zurk's neck, and I was scared the man would be worse injured than he ever was, the way she kissed him.

Zurk had expressed his intentions of leavin' for larger and greener fields as soon as the weddin' was over; so when the festivities was drawin' to a close I begun lookin' around for him. He was nowhere in sight and I ambled outside.

Back in the orchard, underneath one of the prettiest apple-trees on the place, I seen Mrs. Stevens. She was holdin' a big red book under her arm, and there was tears rollin' down her cheeks. Beside her was Zurk, bendin' over and kissin' her hand. When he started away from her toward the house Mrs. Stevens touched his shoulder, and her lips moved. Zurk stopped and looked back-it was only a minute, but I can't tell you in words what I seen in that minute; it was somethin' bigger and finer than a lot of men see in a lifetime.

When me and him drove back to the barn I sneaked over to Billy Debusk's, and when I come back I didn't say nothin' (you understand, there's times when words is out of place), but I just tucked the cigars under the seat in his rig where he'd find 'em.

As soon as Zurk got hooked up he went around behind his buggy and dug out the last remainin' volume of "The World's Universal Knowledge."

"Mr. Mulberry," he says, handin' me the book, "I want you to accept this in the interests of light and learnin'. My sojourn in Tumbleweed Valley has meant a lot to me. It's the only place I ever felt I might have belonged."

As I watched him drive off into the sunset toward Dawson I waved to him, but he didn't see me. He was lookin' toward the Stevens' place, and he was still lookin' toward it when he dropped outa sight over a rise.

HIS IS the first day of July. Officially at least, the 1927 flood in the Mississippi Valley is over. Newspapers assure us of this fact. Everybody says so; it must be true.

Nevertheless, figures made available by the Red Cross on June 21, show that 590,530 persons have been cared for during the emergency; on that date there were still 63,378 persons in refugee camps, while 242,484 persons were being fed. In addition, relief forces were feeding 157,628 animals. In Louisiana 203,966 persons have received help, have received help, while 150,200 were still being cared for on that date. In Mississippi the total number cared for was 168,936, while 101,400 persons were still receiving help. Also, on that date, there were still two million acres of farm and pasture land under

water.

Heavy rains in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana have prolonged flood conditions in Louisiana and Mississippi by diminishing the rate of the river's fall. Cotton acreage in northern Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri and Tennessee has been reduced 529,000 acres by the floodwaters, as compared with the acreage in this section in 1926, according

to the Bureau of Agricultural Economics. Nevertheless, the flood is over, and the people of the Lower Valley are beginning again.

Secretary Mellon has announced that, at the close of the fiscal year, there will be a surplus in the treasury, from this year's taxation, of $600,000,000. This is an amazing amount of money, even for the richest country in the world-an overflowing treasury, but as yet there has been nothing said about using any of this surplus for rehabilitation of the flooded areas of the Mississippi Valley. And by the general term rehabilitation, the people of the Lower Valley mean protection from future floods.

America gave $20,000,000 to Russian and $100,000,000 to European sufferers, in wartime, but not one cent from the National Treasury has been suggested, at this writing, to safeguard the future of the vast and fertile valley which lies in the heart of the United States.

The people of this country, however, have not been so slow to show their sympathy. They have contributed $16,100,000 already to the Red Cross. Herbert Hoover, Secretary of Commerce, gave this as the official figure while in New Orleans on June 28. With this sum, a

Maps by United States engineers show the actual drainage area of the Mississippi River. Waters from the Red, the Arkansas, the Missouri, the upper Mississippi and the Ohio Rivers must flow, finally, into the main channel of the lower Mississippi, thence to the Gulf of Mexico. This drainage area is like a gigantic funnel, narrowing as it approaches the Gulf. It includes a part of twenty-two states. Such states as Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky, lying wholly within the area.

More than half of these states receive all of the benefits of Mississippi River drainage and but few of the hardships which this drainage brings about in flood times. The high waters in the Mississippi, to which all the states mentioned contribute, must be taken care of by the states lying along the rivers the Mississippi and its largest tributaries. In the past, each state looked to its own levees as best it could, using its taxes and such sums as it could beg from Congress. From Cairo to the Gulf, where levees are used to protect

the rich bottom lands, the same policy has been followed: "If our state levees hold,—well, those folks down-stream must watch out for themselves."

More and more water drains into the Mississippi every year, owing to the growth of cities along the river, the cutting away of forests, the closing of natural outlets, the reclamation of natural reservoirs into farmland protected behind levees, and also to increased drainage facilities.

Added to all these reasons for high water in 1927, came simultaneous rainfalls over nearly all of the drainage area. The tributaries rose at the same time, and these swollen streams and rivers poured their torrents into the main stream. If all the levees along the Mississippi, from Cairo to the Gulf, had remained intact-which they did not-the water would have poured over the tops of most of them.

The states that suffer mostly from overflows, are those which are unfortunate enough to lie at the lower end of the narrowing funnel: Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana. The case of Louisiana is typical. This state has spent every cent that it could raise by taxation and bond issue upon levees that proved inadequate. It has not only spent all the money it has for levees, but it has gone into debt to boot, and to-day is confronted by a vast area still under water, ruined ruined crops and, in some sections, a population that is penniless. By the time this article appears in print, many of the people will be hungry. For, despite the work of the Red Cross-and it is notable work-the restitution is not a one hundredth part of the loss.

The 1927 flood-"the greatest peace-time disaster that the United States has ever known,"-to quote Herbert Hoover-was a good newsstory; interesting, dramatic, terrible. For a time every newspaper in the United States was full of it. Hun

dreds of journalists wrote about it. Some of the articles were excellent, some were not so convincing, but it will be observed that the men who knew least about the history of the Mississippi, were those who, with a gesture, solved the problem of the river's future. The men who have lived their lives beside the Mississippi are not so sure; sure that a solution can be worked out,-but not so sure that it will be worked out.

It appears, at this time, that the solution will include higher and stronger levees, built to government specification; outlets or spillways call them what you like-in several places below the mouth of the Yazoo River, and some method of sourcestream control or reservoirs above that point. Part of these thingsprobably all of them-must be done before there will be any safety from overflows. And yet, there are arguments against each of these solutions. Since 1879 there have been men who advocated controlled outlets or spillways, and there was another and stronger group in Congress which opposed such spillways and has stood for "levees only" or confinement of the river between dikes. Some members of the latter group have changed their minds this year.

But opponents of spillways tell us that these outlets are useful only to the Lower Valley and would be ineffective at points higher up in the stream; they say that such outlets

mean the building of sand-bars by the river's current, as it sweeps through the new opening; they point out that each spillway calls for hundreds of miles of additional levee-building, as these artificial streams or outlets must be protected on both sides, all the way from the river to the body of water into which they empty. Despite the arguments against such. spillways, a levee at Poydras, some twenty miles below New Orleans, was dynamited to make a similar outlet, when the flood waters were threatening New Orleans. Such desperate measures had never been taken before, officially, at least.

But already the propagandists are announcing, in fourteen-point type, that "New Orleans has always been safe from the Mississippi; New Orleans will always be safe." If this be true, then some one blundered rather badly in dynamiting a levee which sent thousands of acres of rich farm-land under water, made nearly four thousand people homeless, destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of property, and an enormous number of the fur-bearing animals which have made this section the richest fur-producing region in the United States.

Such obvious propaganda defeats itself. itself. The question is not, "Was New Orleans safe this year?" but rather, "Will New Orleans be safe in the future?" The answer to the first question is immaterial now, but the answer to the second is of paramount importance. I do not doubt that New Orleans will be safe in the future, for it has learned its lesson, has paid dearly for it, is still paying and will continue to pay for some time to come. At this moment New