ood a straight, scanty
growth. The wheat showed naked spots on its western side, the Vermillion
having overflowed after the sowing and lain so long that the seed rotted
in the wet. The flax stems turned up their blue faces and shriveled into
a thin cover on the sod. And in the corn-field, that promised nubbins
instead of the usual husking, there shone too soon a glimmer of gold.

Around the fields the brittle grass sloped down to the shrinking
sloughs, where the muskrat houses stood high and dry, stranded on the
cracked swamp-beds like beached boats. The river, for weeks a
wide-spread, muddy stream, was now but a chain of trickling pools.
Drought was abroad with its burning hand, and the landscape lay bared
and brown.

But frost, sun, and winds had not been the only scourges. Potato-bugs
had settled upon the long patch that was bordered by the reservation
road. The youngest brother had painted the riddled vines green with
poison, and the little girl had gone along the rows with a stick,
knocking thousands of the pests into an oyster-can; but their labor had
been in vain. Cutworms had destroyed the melons; cabbage-lice and
squash-bugs had besieged the garden, attended by caterpillars; and
grasshoppers by the millions had hopped across the farm, devouring as
they went and leaving disaster behind them.

The hot wind that bent the stunted grass beside the road reminded the
biggest brother of every catastrophe of the year, and he cried out
angrily to it. "Oh, blow! blow! blow!" he scolded, and, reaching over,
gave the blue mare a slap with the reins to relieve his feelings. It
started her into a smart trot, and she soon topped the ridge along which
the track ran. Then the little girl headed her toward the station.

"It only needs a fire to finish the whole thing up," went on the biggest
brother, ruefully eying the prairie. "The country's as dry as tinder.
And our place ain't plowed around half well enough. If a blaze should
happen to come down on us"--he shook his head gravely.

As if in answer to his words, there came from behind them a gust of hot
air that carried with it the smell of burning grass. He faced to the
rear with an exclamation of alarm and, shading his face, peered back
along the rails. "Catch that?" he asked excitedly. "There _is_ a fire
somewheres; it's behind us. And the wind's in the west!"

The little girl sprang to her feet, the buckboard still going, and also
looked behind. "Why, I can see smoke,"