you to get away for a reasonable price on your claim. It's
a humanitarian move, but I may be able to lump it off for range land in a
few years for about what it costs to pay taxes. But, gents, I got some of
you in and I'm no scallawag when it comes to helpin' you out. Think it
over, and I'll be down this way in two weeks. I've got to go now. It's too
infernal hot to keep alive here. I know where there's two sunflower stalks
up on the trail that's fully two feet tall. I've got to have shade.
Goodday." And Champers was gone.

"What do you say?" The question seemed to come from all at once.

"Let Pryor Gaines speak first. He's our preacher," Asher said with a
smile.

Pryor Gaines was a small, fair-faced man, a scholar, a dreamer, too,
maybe. By birth or accident, he had suffered from a deformity. He limped
when he walked, and his left hand had less than normal efficiency. On his
face the pathos of the large will and the limited power was written over
by the ready smile, the mark of abundant good will toward men.

"I am out of the race," he said calmly. "I'm as poor as any of you, of
course, and I must stay here anyhow, Dr. Carey tells me. I came West on
account of heart action and some pulmonary necessities. I cannot choose
where I shall go, even if I had the means to carry out my choice. But my
necessities need not influence anyone," he added with a smile. "I can live
without you, if I have to."

"How about you?" Stewart said, turning to Asher. "You take no risk at all
in leaving, so you'll go first, I suppose?"

All this time the settlers' wives sat listening to the considerations that
meant so much to them. They wore calico dresses, and not one of them had
on a hat. But their sun-bonnets were clean and stiffly starched, and,
while they were humbly clad, there was not a stupid face among them;
neither was their conversation stupid. Their homes and home devices for
improvement, the last reading in the all too few papers that came their
way, the memories of books and lectures and college life of other days,
and the hope of the future, were among the things of which they spoke.

Virginia Aydelot was no longer the pretty pink and white girl-bride who
had come to the West three years before. Her face and arms were brown as a
gypsy's, but her hair, rumpled by the white sunbonnet she had worn, was
abundant, and her dark eyes and the outlines of her face had not changed.
She would always be handsome without regard to age