r
they'd be blown to pieces. Even then I could feel the wind. It whipped
my own hair loose, and flattened my skirt against my body, and I had to
lean forward to make any advance against it.

By this time the black army of the heavens had rolled up overhead and a
few big frog-like drops of rain began to fall, throwing up little clouds
of dust, as a rifle bullet might. I trundled out a couple of tubs, in
the hope of catching a little soft water. It wasn't until later that I
realized the meaning of Olga's mild stare of reproof. For the next
moment the downpour came, and with it the wind. And such wind! There had
been nothing to stop its sweep, of course, for hundreds and hundreds of
miles, and it hit us the same as a hurricane at sea hits a liner. The
shack shook with the force of it. My two wash-tubs went bounding and
careening off across the landscape, the chicken-coop went over like a
nine-pin, and the air was filled with bits of flying timber. Olga's
wagon, with the hay-rack on top of it, moved solemnly and ponderously
across the barnyard and crashed into the corral, propelled by no power
but that of the wind. My sweet-pea hedges were torn from their wires,
and an armful of hay came smack against the shack-window and was held
there by the wind, darkening the room more than ever.

Then the storm blew itself out, though it poured for two or three hours
afterward. And all the while, although I exulted in that play of
elemental force, I was worrying about my Dinky-Dunk, who was away for
the day, doing what he could to arrange for some harvest hands, when the
time for cutting came. For the wheat, it seems, ripens all at once, and
then the grand rush begins. If it isn't cut the moment it's ripe, the
grain shells out, and that means loss. Olga has been saying that the
wheat on the Cummins section will easily run forty bushels to the acre
and over. It will also grade high, whatever that means. There are six
hundred and forty acres of it in that section, and I've just figured out
that this means a little over twenty-five thousand bushels of grain. Our
other piece on the home ranch is a larger tract, but a little lighter in
crop. That wheat is just beginning to turn from green to the palest of
yellow. And it has a good show, Olga says, if frost will only keep off
and no hail comes. Our one occupation, for the next few weeks, will be
watching the weather.

_Sunday the Thirteenth_

Percy and Mrs. Watson drove over to s