first days was the realization that
the era of pioneers had not ended with covered wagon days; that there
were men and women, thousands of them, in our own times, living under
pioneer conditions, fighting the same hardships, the same obstacles, the
same primitive surroundings which had beset that earlier generation.

Toward evening, that first day, sitting on the little board platform in
front of the door where there was a hint of shade and a suggestion of
coolness in the air, we saw two animals approaching.

"I never saw dogs like that, did you?" I said to Ida Mary when they came
a little closer.

She jumped up, crying "Wolves!" We had seen one on the road out from
Pierre. We ran into the shack, nailed the door shut that night--no
risking of trunks or boxes against it--crawled into bed and lay there
for hours, afraid to speak out loud.

Huey Dunn came next day with the keg of water. "Wolves?" he said, as we
told him of the experience. "They wouldn't hurt anyone, unless they were
cornered--or hungry."

"But how," demanded Ida Mary, "were we to tell when they were hungry?"

Huey laughed at that. When the snow lay deep on the ground for a long
time after a blizzard, and there was no way to get food, they sometimes
attacked sheep or cattle, and they had been known to attack persons, but
not often. They generally went in packs to do their foraging.

"Goin' back tomorrow?" Mr. Dunn ejaculated, as we interrupted his talk
about the country to ask him to take us to Pierre. "Why, my wife planned
on your comin' over to dinner tomorrow." But if we wanted to go the next
day--sure, he could take us. Oh, he wouldn't charge us much. As he drove
away he called back, "Don't get scared when you hear the coyotes. You'll
get used to 'em if you stay."

And that night they howled. We were awakened by the eerie, hair-raising
cry that traveled so far over the open prairie and seemed so near; a
wild, desolate cry with an uncannily human quality. That mournful sound
is as much a part of the prairie as is the wind which blows, unchecked,
over the vast stretches, the dreary, inescapable voice of the plains.
The first time we heard the coyotes there seemed to be a hundred of
them, though there were probably half a dozen. All Huey Dunn's assurance
that they were harmless and that it was a nightly occurrence failed to
calm us.

When Huey got home his wife asked what he thought of their new
neighbors.

"Right nice girls to talk to," Huey s