o you to help you, Asher, but
you know how the Thaine estate was reduced."

"Yes, I helped the family to that," Asher replied.

"Well, I seem to have helped you to lose the Aydelot inheritance. We are
starting neck and neck out here," Virginia cried, "and we'll win. I can
see our plantation--ranch, you call it--now, with groves and a little lake
and a big ranch house, and just acres of wheat and meadows, and red clover
and fine stock and big barns, and you and me, the peers of a proud
countryside when we have really conquered. 'Instead of the thorn shall
come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle
tree.' Isn't that the promise?"

"Oh, Virgie, any man could win a kingdom with a wife like you," Asher said
tenderly. "Back in Ohio, when I grubbed the fence corners, I saw this
country night and day, waiting for us here, and I wondered why the folks
were willing to let the marshes down in the deep woods stagnate and breed
malaria, and then fight the fever with calomel and quinine every summer,
instead of opening the woodland and draining the swamps. Nevertheless,
I've left enough money in the Cloverdale bank to take you back East and
start up some little sort of a living there, if you find you cannot stay
here. I couldn't bring you here and burn all the bridges. All you have to
do is to say you want to go back, and you can go."

"You are very good, Asher." His wife's voice was low and soft. "But I
don't want to go back. Not until we have failed here. And we shall not
fail."

And together that night on the far unconquered plains of Kansas, with the
moon shining down upon them, these two, so full of hope and courage,
planned their future. In the cottonwood trees by the river sands a night
bird twittered sleepily to its mate; the chirp of many crickets in the
short grass below the sunflowers had dwindled to a mere note at intervals.
The soft breeze caressed the two young faces, then wandered far and far
across the lonely land, and in its long low-breathed call to the night
there was a sigh of sadness.

CHAPTER III

THE WILL OF THE WIND

Naught but the endless hills, dim and far and blue,
And sighing wind, and sailing cloud, and nobody here but you.
--James W. Steele.

The next day, and for many days following, the wind blew; fiercely and
unceasingly it blew, carrying every movable thing before it. Whatever was
tending in its