it up
here."

"I ain't got the strength to help," said Wade.

Martin's eyes involuntarily sought his mother's. He knew the power in
her lean, muscular arms, the strength in her narrow shoulders.

"We'd better fetch it," she agreed.

The pair made the trip down on horseback and brought back the shack that
was to be home for many years. Eighteen miles off a man had some extra
hand-cut shingles which he was willing to trade for a horse-collar.
While Mrs. Wade took the long drive Martin, under his father's guidance,
chopped down enough trees to build a little lean-to kitchen and
make-shift stable. Sixteen miles south another neighbor had some
potatoes to exchange for a hatching of chickens. Martin rode over with
the hen and her downy brood. The long rides, consuming hours, were
trying, for Martin was needed every moment on a farm where everything
was still to be done.

Day by day Wade was growing weaker, and it was Mrs. Wade who helped put
in the crop, borrowing a plow, harrow, and extra team, and repaying the
loan with the use of their own horses and wagon. Luck was with their
wheat, which soon waved green. It seemed one of life's harsh jests
that now, when the tired, ill-nourished baby had fretted his last, old
Brindle, waxing fat and sleek on the wheat pasture, should give more
rich cream than the Wades could use. "He could have lived on the skimmed
milk we feed to the pigs," thought Martin.

In the Spring he went with his father into Fallon, the nearest trading
point, to see David Robinson, the owner of the local bank. By giving a
chattel mortgage on their growing wheat, they borrowed enough, at twenty
per cent, to buy seed corn and a plow. It was Wade's last effort. Before
the corn was in tassel, he had been laid beside Benny.

Martin, who already had been doing a man's work, now assumed a man's
responsibilities. Mrs. Wade consulted more and more with him, relied
more and more upon his judgment. She was immensely proud of him, of his
steadiness and dependability, but at rare moments, remembering her own
normal childhood, she would think with compunction: "It ain't right.
Young 'uns ought to have some fun. Seems like it's makin' him too old
for his age." She never spoke of these feelings, however. There were no
expressions of tenderness in the Wade household. She was doing her
best by her children and they knew it. Even Nellie, child that she was,
understood the grimness of the battle before them.

They were