the houses were banked with sods and earth
halfway to the roofs. With so little material for keeping warm, and that
of the lightest variety, it was necessary to make the living quarters
impervious to the never-ceasing winds which tore at the thin walls of the
unprotected houses that sheltered such folk as were hardy enough to
remain.

It was impossible to build sheds for all the stock, so the hogs were
allowed to swarm under the feet of the horses tied in the straw stable,
and many and sad were the accidents to the smaller animals. It was soon
clear that not many of them could be carried through till the spring.
Seeing that they lost weight rapidly, as many as were full grown were
killed and their flabby carcasses salted away to be eaten.

Fortunately, the grasshoppers had not arrived in Kansas till after the
small grain had been nearly all cut, so that there was considerable oat
and wheat straw in the country. Mr. Farnshaw bargained for every straw
stack he could find, but straw was a poor substitute for the corn and hay
to which the cattle were accustomed, and as the weeks lengthened into
months, and winter closed in, the unprotected cattle grew thinner and ever
thinner. Corn was quoted in the markets at a dollar a bushel, but in fact
was not to be had at any price. Iowa had had a drought, and Illinois was
the nearest base of supplies, and as it was generally known that there was
no money west of the Missouri River, no grain was sent to Kansas.

Finding that the horses did not thrive on the straw alone, and knowing
that wheat would very quickly kill them, Mr. Farnshaw put away a
sufficient amount of oats for seed and then carefully portioned out the
rest to be fed to four of his best broodmares, hoping to be able to put in
the spring crops with them as well as to save the coming colts of two. The
rest, he decided, must take their chances on getting through the winter
alive.

The family food consisted largely of bread and the slabs of thin meat,
with a sort of coffee made from browned rye. As a "company dish" there was
a scanty supply of sweet corn, dried before the drought had cut the crop
short. There were no eggs, because the chickens had sickened from eating
grasshoppers in the fall and nearly all had died. The few hens which
remained clung to the limbs of the half-grown cottonwood trees throughout
the long winter nights, and found barely food enough during the day to
keep life in their fuzzy bodies, which could