didn't you get away sooner? I know she will get over it, because
she's as good a woman as we are men, and we stood for it."

"Well, here's your plow. Better get your guard thrown up. I can smell
smoke now. There's a prairie fire sweeping in on this wind somewhere.
There's a storm brewing, too. Remember what a fight we had with fire a
year ago?"

Asher was helping to put Jim's team in the harness.

"Yes, you saved your well and a few other little things. But you've got
your grit, you darned Buckeye, to hold on and start again from the ashes.
And now you have your wife here. You are lucky," Jim declared.

"Where's that broken plow of yours? Is it bolt or weld? Maybe I can mend
it." Asher was casting about for tools.

"It's bolt. Everything is on the stable shelves," Jim called back against
the wind, as he drove the plow deep in the black soil. "Be sure you put
'em back when you are through with 'em, too."

"Poor Jim!" Asher said to himself with a smile. "The artist in him makes
him keep the place in order. He'd stop to hang up his coat and vest if he
had to fight a mad bull. Poor judgment puts a good many tragedies into
lives as well as stage villain types of crime."

And then Asher thought of Virginia, and wondered what she was doing
through the long afternoon. He was whistling softly with a smile in his
eyes as Jim Shirley made the tenth round of the premises and stopped
opposite the stable door.

"Hey, Asher, come out and see the sky now," he called. "It's prairie fire
and equinoctial storm combined."

Asher hurried out to see the dull southwest heavens shutting off the
sunlight out of which raged a wind searing the sky to a dun gray.

"Don't stand there staring, you idiot. Why don't you get your plowing
done?" he cried to Shirley.

Shirley began to loose the trace-chain from the plow.

"That strip is wide enough now," he declared. "I've got a clover guard,
anyhow. I don't need to back-fire like my neighbors do."

As Asher untied his ponies and climbed into the wagon, Jim held their
reins.

"Stop a minute. Let a single man offer you a word of advice, will you?" he
asked.

"All right, I need advice," Asher smiled down on Jim's earnest face.

"Then heed it, too. No use to tell you to take care of your wife. You'll
do that to a fault. But don't make any mistake about Mrs. Asher Aydelot.
She went through Rebel and Union lines once to save your life. Don't doubt
her strength to hold her own here as soon