‘It isn’t going down very well with me, either,’ said Willard, caustically.

Ed said, ‘The whole crop’s protected, of course, under the Federal Crop Insurance Programme. That’s as long as we can convince them that this blight is officially a peril of nature, like a drought, or a hailstorm. But all they can do under the law is compensate us for the cost of putting in the crop. They can’t pay us for any profits we might have made.’

Dyson looked out across the farm. ‘Looks like your first year at South Burlington won’t be too happy, then. All work and no profit.’

Ed nodded. ‘It could be worse than that. If we can’t isolate this blight, and find out how to lick it, then I daren’t plant again next year.’

Willard leaned forward in his seat. ‘With respect, Ed, have you tried to think what your Daddy might have done, under the same circumstances?’

‘I’m not my daddy, Willard.’

‘No, I know you’re not. I don’t expect you to be. But your daddy was never averse to calling on his friends, whenever he needed a helping hand, just like his friends were never averse to calling on him.’

‘You’re trying to tell me something, aren’t you?’ said Ed, raising his voice above the roaring of the helicopter’s motor.

‘I’m trying to suggest something,’ said Willard. ‘I’m trying to suggest that when we get down, you might put in a call to Senator Shearson Jones.’

‘Shearson Jones? That old twister?’

Willard shrugged. ‘He may be a twister, but he’s got himself some pretty powerful friends in the Department of Agriculture. What’s more, when your daddy died, he still owed your daddy for two notable favours, one of which was covering up for him over that wheat-dumping scandal in seventy-eight.’

‘Why should Shearson Jones still think he owes this family anything now that Dad’s dead?’

Willard grinned. ‘Because this family still remembers, that’s why. And as long as there’s just one Hardesty around who knows what the upright and honest Senator Jones tried to do with a hundred and forty-two thousand tons of best Kansas grain, then the upright and honest Senator Jones is going to continue to smile whenever a Hardesty asks him to.’

‘That sounds like blackmail to me,’ said Ed.

Willard grinned. ‘You might call it blackmail in New York City. Here in Kansas we call it mutual assistance.’

‘Hm,’ said Ed.

‘You don’t believe me?’ asked Willard. ‘You call him when you get back, and see if I’m not speaking the truth. You ask Senator Jones if the Department of Agriculture maybe can’t find some extra compensation for the victims of new and unusual crop diseases.’

‘Willard,’ said Ed, ‘you should have been a politician, not a farmer.’