or that brief interval at noon, without
sight of water. Our faces and hands were blistered, our throats parched
from the hot wind.

This was not the West as I had dreamed of it, not the West even of
banditry and violent action. It was a desolate, forgotten land, without
vegetation save for the dry, crackling grass, without visible tokens of
fertility. Drab and gray and empty. Stubborn, resisting land. Heroics
wouldn't count for much here. It would take slow, back-breaking labor,
and time, and the action of the seasons to make the prairie bloom.
People had said this was no place for two girls. It began to seem that
they were right.

And this was the goal of our long journey--the tar-paper shack. We
pushed the trunk over in front of the door which had no lock, piled the
chairs and suitcases on top of the trunk; spread a comfort over the
criss-cross rope bed and threw ourselves across it without undressing.
We had no gun or other weapon for protection and were not brave enough
to use one had we possessed it.

The little cellar windows which stood halfway between the low ceiling
and the floor were nailed shut. But we needed neither window nor door,
so far as air was concerned. It poured through the wide cracks like
water through a sieve.

While we tossed, too tired and sick at heart to sleep, I asked: "What
became of the young man who built this shack?"

"He lived here only a few weeks and abandoned it," Ida Mary explained.
"The claim reverted to the government, shack, bunk and all. He couldn't
stick it out."

* * * * *

The next morning we awoke to a world flooded with sunshine, and it was
the surprise of our lives that we had lived to see it.

Ida started the oil stove and put on the coffee. Wearily I dragged
myself out of bed. We fried bacon, made toast, unpacked our few dishes.
Discovering that a hinged shelf on the wall was intended for a table, we
put it up and set our breakfast on it. We found that we were really
hungry.

Our determination to start back home was still unshaken, but we had
reckoned without the prairies. We were marooned as on a desert island.
And more pressing, even, than some way of getting back to Pierre--and
home--was the need for water. We must get a jug of water somewhere.
Water didn't come from a tap on the prairies. We began to wonder where
it did come from; certainly there wasn't a drop to be found on Ida
Mary's claim.

In the glaring morning sun wh