direction, it helped over the ground amazingly. Whatever
tried to move in the face of it had to fight for every inch of the way. It
whipped all the gold from the sunflowers and threshed them mercilessly
about. It snapped the slender stems of the big, bulgy-headed tumble-weeds
and sent them tumbling over and over, mile after mile, until they were
caught at last in some draw, like helpless living things, to swell the
heap for some prairie fire to feed upon. It lifted the sand from the river
bed and swept it in a prairie simoon up the slope, wrapping the little
cabin in a cloud of gritty dust. The cottonwoods along the waterway moaned
as if in pain and flung up their white arms in feeble protest. The wild
plum bushes in the draw were almost buried by the wind-borne drift
smothering the narrow crevice, while out on the plains the long lashing
waves of bended grass made the eyes burn with weariness. And the sun
watched it all with unpitying stare, and the September heat was maddening.
But it was cool inside the cabin. Sod houses shut out the summer warmth as
they shed off the winter's cold.

Virginia Aydelot stood at the west window watching her husband trying to
carry two full pails of water which the wind seemed bent on blowing
broadcast along his path. He had been plowing a double fireguard around
the premises that morning and his face and clothes were gray with dust.
These days of unceasing winds seemed to Virginia to sap the last atom of
her energy. But she was young and full of determination.

"Why did you put the well so far away, Asher?" she asked, as he came
inside.

The open door gave the wind a new crevice to fill, and it slapped
wrathfully at the buckets, splashing the contents on the floor.

"We have to put wells close to the water in this country. I put this one
in before I built here. And if we have a well, we are so glad we don't try
to move it. The wind might find it out and fill it up with sand while we
were doing it. It's a jealous wind, this." Asher's smile lit up his
dust-grimed face.

"I've tried all day to keep the dust off the table. I meant to do a
washing this morning, but how could any garment stay on the line out there
and not be whipped to shreds?"

"Virginia, did you ever do a washing before the war?" Asher asked through
the towel. He was trying to scrub his face clean with the least possible
amount of water.

"Oh, that's ancient history. No, nor did I do anything else. I was too
young.