gan doggedly. "I give you the chance.
Don't never blame me because you are too green to know what's good for
you. You are the only green things here, though. And don't forget, there
ain't a man of you can get out of here on your own income or on your own
savin's. Not a one. You're all locked into this valley an' the key's in
purgatory. An' I'd see you all with the key before I'd ever lift a finger
to help one of you, and not a one of you can help yourselves."

With these words Champers left the company and rode away up the trail
toward civilization and safety.

In the silence that followed, Pryor Gaines said:

"Friends, let us not forget that this is the Sabbath day on the prairie as
in the crowded city. Let us not leave until we ask for His blessing in
whose sight no sparrow falls unnoticed."

And together the little band of resolute men and women offered prayer to
Him whose is the earth and the fulness, or the emptiness, thereof.

Four days and nights went by. On the fifth morning at daybreak the cool
breeze that sweeps the prairies in the early dawn flowed caressingly along
the Grass River valley. The settlers rose early. This was the best part of
the day, and they made use of it.

"You poor Juno!" Virginia Aydelot said, as she leaned against the corral
post in the morning twilight, and patted the mare gently.

"You and I are 'plains-broke' for certain. We don't care for hot winds,
nor cold winds, nor prairie fire, nor even a hailstorm, if it would only
come. Never mind, old Juno, Asher has the greenest fields of all the
valley because he hasn't stopped plowing. That's why you must keep on
working. Maybe it will rain today, and you'll get to rest. Rain and
rest!"

She looked toward the shadowy purple west, and then away to the east,
decked in the barbaric magnificence of a plains sunrise.

"It may rain today, but it won't rain rain. It will be hot air and
trouble. The sod shack is cool, anyhow, Juno. Not so cool, though, as that
little glen in the mountains where the clear spring bubbles and babbles
all day long." She brushed her hair back from her forehead and, squeezing
Juno's mane, she added, "We don't want to go back yet, though. Not yet, do
we, Juno, even if it rains trouble instead of rain? Inherited pride and
the will to do as we please make us defy the plains, still."

The day was exceedingly hot, but by noon a cloud seemed rising in the
northwest; not a glorious, black thunder-cloud that means cool