1914

Copyright

A. C. McClurg & Co.

1914

Published September, 1914

Copyrighted in Great Britain

W. F. HALL PRINTING COMPANY, CHICAGO

To

THAT FARMER FATHER AND MOTHER

WITH THEIR HANDS ON TODAY

BUT WITH THEIR EYES ON TOMORROW

WHO THROUGH LABOR AND LONELINESS AND

HOPES LONG DEFERRED

HAVE WON A DESERT TO FRUITFULNESS

A WILDERNESS TO BEAUTY

FOREWORD

A reach of level prairie bounded only by the edge of the world--misty
ravelings of heliotrope and amber, covered only by the arch of
heaven--blue, beautiful and pitiless in its far fathomless spaces. To the
southwest a triple fold of deeper purple on the horizon line--mere hint of
commanding headlands thitherward. Across the face of the prairie streams
wandering through shallow clefts, aimlessly, somewhere toward the
southeast; their course secured by gentle swells breaking into sheer low
bluffs on the side next to the water, or by groups of cottonwood trees and
wild plum bushes along their right of way. And farther off the brown
indefinite shadowings of half-tamed sand dunes. Aside from these things, a
featureless landscape--just grassy ground down here and blue
cloud-splashed sky up there.

The last Indian trail had disappeared. The hoofprints of cavalry horses
had faded away. The price had been paid for the prairie--the costly
measure of death and daring. But the prairie itself, in its loneliness and
loveliness, was still unsubdued. Through the fury of the winter's
blizzard, the glory of the springtime, the brown wastes of burning
midsummer, the long autumn, with its soft sweet air, its opal skies, and
the land a dream of splendor which the far mirage reflects and the wide
horizon frames in a curtain of exquisite amethyst--through none of these
was the prairie subdued. Only to the coming of that king whose scepter is
the hoe, did soul of the soil awake to life and promise. To him the
wilderness gave up everything except its beauty and the sweep of the
freedom-breathing winds that still inspire it.

CONTENTS

PART I

CHAPTER PAGE
I The Blessing of Asher 1
II The Sign of the Sunflower 16
III The Will of the Wind 30
IV Distress Signals 45
V A Plainsman of the Old School 58
VI When the Grasshopper Was a Burden 82
VII The Last Bridge Burned 103