n a
picnic dinner for the coming Saturday. Jim Shirley hummed an old love tune
as he helped Pryor Gaines to close the windows and door for the week. Only
little Todd Stewart, with sober face, scratched thoughtfully at the hard
earth with his hard little toes.

"Can't there be no more little children where there's grasshoppers and
Darley Champerses?" he asked his mother.

"Yes, yes, Todd. You won't be lonesome long," his mother assured him.
"Some time when you are a man you can say, 'I was the only little boy the
grasshoppers and Darley Champers didn't get.' You stout little Trojan!"

And then Todd, too, caught the spirit of the day and went singing
blithely away. Across the bare hollow of Grass River, and beyond the sand
dunes into the brown wastes that had been grassy prairies, his young voice
came trailing back still singing, as he rode behind his father, following
the long hot trail toward their home. And the other settlers went their
ways, each with courage renewed, for the new week's work.

Yet, they were lonesomely few in number, and the prairies were vast; they
were poverty-stricken, with little means by which to sustain life through
the coming season; on every hand the desolate plains lay robbed of every
green growth, and to this land they were nailed hand and foot as to a
cross of crucifixion. But they were young. They believed in the West and
in themselves. Their faces were set toward the future. They had voted
themselves into holding on, and, except for the Aydelots, no one family
had more resource than another. The Aydelots could leave the West if they
chose. But they did not choose. So together they laughed at hardship; they
made the most of their meager possessions; they helped each other as one
family--and they trusted to Providence for the future. And Providence,
albeit she shows a seamy side to poverty, still loves the man who laughs
at hard luck. The seasons following were not unkind. The late summer
rains, the long autumn, and the mild winter were blessings. But withal,
there were days on days of real hunger. Stock died for lack of
encouragement to live without food. And the grim while of waiting for seed
time and signs of prosperity was lived through with that old Anglo-Saxon
tenacity that has led the English speaking peoples to fight and colonize
to the ends of the earth.

"Virginia," Asher said one noontime, as the two sat at their spare meal,
"the folks are coming up tonight to hold a council.