to Ordway, and cooking
became a part of my daily routine. Charles occasionally helped out and
we both learned to make biscuits and even pies. Frank loyally declared
my apple-pies to be as good as any man could make.

Meanwhile an ominous change had crept over the plain. The winds were hot
and dry and the grass, baked on the stem, had became as inflammable as
hay. The birds were silent. The sky, absolutely cloudless, began to
scare us with its light. The sun rose through the dusty air, sinister
with flare of horizontal heat. The little gardens on the breaking
withered, and many of the women began to complain bitterly of the
loneliness, and lack of shade. The tiny cabins were like ovens at
mid-day.

Smiling faces were less frequent. Timid souls began to inquire, "Are all
Dakota summers like this?" and those with greatest penetration reasoned,
from the quality of the grass which was curly and fine as hair, that
they had unwittingly settled upon an arid soil.

And so, week by week the holiday spirit faded from the colony and men in
feverish unrest uttered words of bitterness. Eyes ached with light and
hearts sickened with loneliness. Defeat seemed facing every man.

By the first of September many of those who were in greatest need of
land were ready to abandon their advanced position on the border and
fall back into the ranks behind. We were all nothing but squatters. The
section lines had not been run and every pre-emptor looked and longed
for the coming of the surveying crew, because once our filings were made
we could all return to the east, at least for six months, or we could
prove up and buy our land. In other words, the survey offered a chance
to escape from the tedious monotony of the burning plain into which we
had so confidently thrust ourselves.

But the surveyors failed to appear though they were reported from day to
day to be at work in the next township and so, one by one, those of us
who were too poor to buy ourselves food, dropped away. Hundreds of
shanties were battened up and deserted. The young women returned to
their schools, and men who had counted upon getting work to support
their families during the summer, and who had failed to do so, abandoned
their claims and went east where settlement had produced a crop. Our
song of emigration seemed but bitter mockery now.

Moved by the same desire to escape, I began writing to various small
towns in Minnesota and Iowa in the hope of obtaining a school, b