day, not much of anything but a plaint and
a denunciation of competition in bones. Morgan thought the wind must be
having its effect on Joe's brains; they seemed to be so hydrated that
morning they would have rattled against his skull. Morgan considered
riding on and leaving him, at the risk of giving offense, dismissing the
notion when they rose a hill and looked down on Ascalon not more than a
mile away.

"I believe there's a cloud coming up over there," said Morgan, pointing
to the southwest.

"Which?" said Joe, rousing as briskly as if he had been doused with a
bucket of water. "Cloud? No, that ain't no cloud. That's dust. More wind
behind that, a regular sand storm. Ever been through one of 'em?"

"In Nebraska," Morgan replied, with detached attention, watching what he
still believed to be a cloud lifting above the hazy horizon.

"Nothin' like the sand storms in this country," Joe discounted, never
willing to yield one point in derogative comparison between that land
and any other. "Feller told me one time he saw it blow sand so hard here
it started in wearin' a knot hole in the side of his shanty in the
evenin', and by mornin' the whole blame shack was gone. Eat them boards
up clean, that feller said. Didn't leave nothin' but the nails. But I
always thought he was stretchin' it a little," Joe added, not a gleam of
humor to be seen anywhere in the whole surface of his wind-dried face.

"That's a cloud, all right," Morgan insisted, passing the reduction by
attrition of the settler's shack.

"Cloud?" said Joe, throwing up his head with renewed alertness. He
squinted a little while into the southwest. "Bust my hub if it _ain't_ a
cloud! Comin' up, too--comin' right along. Say, do you reckon that
rain-crow feller brought that cloud up from somewheres?"

"He didn't have anything to do with it," Morgan assured him, grinning a
little over the quick shift in the old man's attitude, for there was awe
in his voice.

"No, I don't reckon," said Joe thoughtfully, "but it looks kind of
suspicious."

The cloud was lifting rapidly, as summer storms usually come upon that
unprotected land, sullen in its threat of destruction rather than
promise of relief. A great dark fleece rolled ahead of the green-hued
rain curtain, the sun bright upon it, the hush of its oncoming over the
waiting earth. No breath of wind stirred, no movement of nature
disturbed the silent waiting of the dusty land, save the lunging of
foolish grassho