Handbills blew around the adobe village, announcing that five hundred cotton-pickers were wanted at once in Arizona. The Reo, full of Beechams and trailing Carrie, headed south.

The surprisingly large grocery bill had been paid, a few clothes bought, Daddy's ulcerated tooth pulled, and the Reo's patched tires replaced with better used ones. The result was that the Beecham pocketbooks were as flat as pancakes.

"Yet we've worked like horses," Daddy said heavily. "And, worse than that, we've let Gramma and the kids work as I never thought Beechams would."

"But we can't blame Farmer Lukes," said Grandpa. "With all the planting and digging and hauling he's done, he says he hasn't a cent to show for it, once he's paid for his seed. It's too deep for me."

Down across Colorado, where the names were Spanish, Daddy said, because it used to be part of Mexico. Down across New Mexico, where the air smelled of cedar; where scattered adobe houses had bright blue doors and strings of scarlet chili peppers fringing their roofs; where Indians sat under brush shelters by the highway and held up pottery for sale. Down into Arizona, where Grandma had to admit that the colors she'd seen on the picture postcards of it were not too bright. Here were red rocks, pink, blue-gray, white, yellow, purple; and the morning and evening sun set their colors afire and made them flower gardens of flame. Here the Indian women wore flounced skirts and velvet tunics and silver jewelry. They herded flocks of sheep and goats and lived in houses like inverted brown bowls.

"We've had worse homes, this year," Grandma said. "I'd never hold up my head if they knew back home." Along the road with the Reo ran an endless parade of old cars and trailers. There were snub-nosed Model T's, packed till they bulged; monstrous Packards with doors tied shut; yellow roadsters that had been smart ten years ago, jolting along with mattresses on their tops and young families jammed into their luggage compartments. Once in a while they met another goat, like Carrie, who wasn't giving as much milk as before.

"All this great country," Grandma marveled some more, "and no room for these folks. Half a million of us, some say, without a place to go."

Dick said, "The kid in that Oklahoma car said the drought dried up their farm and the wind blew it away. Nothing will grow in the ground that's left."

"He's from the Dust Bowl," Grandpa assented. "Thousands of these folks are from the Dust Bowl."

The parade of old cars limped along for two weeks, growing thicker as it drew near the part of Arizona where the pickers had been called for. The Beechams saw more and more signs on fences and poles: FIVE HUNDRED PICKERS WANTED!

"They don't say how much they pay," Grandma noticed.

"Ninety cents a hundred pounds is usual this year, and a fellow can make a bare living at that," said Daddy.

Soon the procession turned off the road, the Beechams with it. The place was swarming with pickers.

"How much are you paying?" Daddy asked.

"Fifty cents a hundred."

"Why, man alive, we'd starve on that pay," Daddy growled, the corners of his jaws white with anger.

"You don't need to work if you don't want to," the manager barked at him. "Here's two thousand folks glad to work at fifty cents."

Leaving Jimmie to mind Sally in the car, the Beechams went to picking at once. Grandma had saved their old cotton sacks, fortunately, since they cost a dollar apiece.

Rose-Ellen's heart thumped as if she were running a race. Everyone was picking at top speed, for there were far too many pickers and they all tried to get more than their share. The Beechams started at noon. At night, when they weighed in, Grandpa and Daddy each got forty cents, Grandma twenty-five, Dick twenty, and Rose-Ellen fifteen.

When he paid them, the foreman said, "No more work here. All cleaned up."

"Good land," Grandma protested, her voice shaking, "bring us from Coloraydo for a half day's work?"

"Sorry," said the foreman. "First come, first served."

In a blank quietness, the Beechams went on to hunt a camp. And here they were fortunate, for they came upon a neat tent city with a sign declaring it a Government Camp. Tents set on firm platforms faced inward toward central buildings, and everything was clean and orderly. They drove in. Yes, they could pitch their tent there, the man in the office said; there was one vacant floor. The rent was a dollar a week, but they could work it out, if they would rather, cleaning up the camp. Grandpa said they'd better work it out, since it might be hard to find jobs near by.

Even Rose-Ellen, even Dick and Jimmie, were excited over the laundry tubs in the central building, and more interested in the shower baths. Twice a day they washed themselves, and their clothes were kept fresher than they had been for a long time. Neighbors came calling, besides; and there were entertainments every week, with the whole camp taking part.

"Seems like home," said Grandpa. "If only we could find work."

The nurse on duty found that the sore on Dick's hand was scabies--the itch--picked up in some other camp, and she treated and bandaged it carefully.

Every day the men went out hunting jobs, taking others with them to share the cost of gasoline; and every day they came back discouraged. Even in the fine camp, money leaked out steadily for food. At last the Beechams gave up hope of finding work. They set out for California, the fairyland of plenty, as they thought.

At first California looked like any other state, but soon the children began naming their discoveries aloud. "Lookit! Oranges on trees!" "Roses! And those red Christmas flowers growing high as the garage!" "Palm trees--like feather dusters stuck on telegraph poles!"

"Little white houses and gardens!" crooned Grandma.

Soon, too, they saw the familiar posters: PICKERS WANTED; and the Reo followed the signs to the fields.

They were pea-fields, this time, but Grandma, peering at the pea-pickers' camp, cried, "My land, if this ain't Floridy all over again!"

"Maybe the owner ain't got the cash to put up decent chicken-coops for folks to live in," Grandpa sputtered, "but if I was him I'd dig ditches for a living before I'd put humans into pigpens like these."

"Let's go a piece farther," Grandma urged.

Grandpa fingered his old wallet. "Five dollars is the least we can keep against the car breaking down. We've got six-fifty now."

So for long months they worked in the peas and lived in the "jungle" camp, pitching their tent at the very edge of its dirt and smell.

Shacks of scrap tin, shingled with rusty pail covers, stood next to shacks made of burlap and pasteboard cartons. Ragged tents huddled behind the shacks, using the same back wall. Mattresses that looked as if they came from the dump lay on the ground with tarpaulins stretched above them as roofs, and these were the only homes of whole families who lived and slept and ate in swarms of stinging flies.

One of the few pleasant things was the Christian Center not very far away. Every mor............