[Old Jules] is the story of a pioneer in the high plains of the trans-Missouri country—western Nebraska. To understand Old Jules thoroughly and to get the sap out of him, to see him in his rugged beauty, one must understand his habitat. The trans-Mississippi country rises, an inclined plane, from the Father of Waters. In six hundred miles the plane is tilted from five hundred feet above sea level to five thousand feet, at the base of the Rocky Mountains. The land along the valley through the eastern Dakotas, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and eastern Kansas is much like that from the Mississippi east to the base of the Alleghenies, rich alluvial soil, loam mostly, where corn grows wherever there is adequate rainfall. There crops are fairly certain. But after the land has risen more than 2500 feet into the thin, dry air, rainfall is never predictable. It...