ary, and there was no answer from the shack or the
store. If she were under that wreckage.... Frantically we clawed at the
timbers, clearing a space, looking for a slip of a girl with long auburn
braids of hair. It was too dark to see clearly, and in my terror I was
ripping the boards in any fashion while Jack strove to quiet me.

"What's the matter?" said a drowsy voice from the door of the shack. It
was Ida Mary, who had slept so heavily she had not heard our arrival or
our shouts or the crash of the cave-in.

I ran to her, sobbing with relief. "The cave's fallen in. I thought
maybe you were in it."

She blinked sleepily and tried to comfort me. "I'm all right, sis," she
said reassuringly. "It must have gone down after I went to bed. Too much
sod piled on top, I guess. Now we'll have to have that fixed."

As I lay in bed, shaking with fatigue and nerve tension, Ida mumbled
drowsily, "Oh, the fresh butter Ma brought me is down in that cave." And
she fell asleep. A few moments later I too was sleeping quietly.

The nights were the life-savers. The evening, in which the air cooled
first in the draws, then lifted softly to the tableland, cooling the
body, quenching the thirst as one breathed it deeply. The fresh peaceful
night. The early dawn which like a rejuvenating tonic gave one new hope.
Thus we got our second wind for each day's bout.

The next day the proof notices I had turned in to the Land Office came
back to me without comment. I explained to Ida Mary what I had done. "I
told him we were going back, and he said I must not start an emigration
movement. I applied for leaves of absence while the railroads are taking
people to the state line free."

"And what," inquired Ida Mary dryly, "will they do at the state line? Go
back to the wife's kinfolk, I suppose."

She was right, of course. I began to see what this trek back en masse
would mean. What if the land horde went marching back? Tens of thousands
of them milling about, homeless, penniless, jobless. Many of them had
been in that position when they had stampeded the frontier, looking to
the land for security. With these broad areas deserted, what would
become of the trade and business; of the new railroads and other
developments just beginning their expansion?

We were harder hit than most districts by the lack of water, but if that
obstacle could be solved the Brule had other things in its favor. The
words of the Register came back to me: "Don't start