The Wind Before the Dawn. Dell H. Munger

and then sat back and enjoyed its effect. He had intended to go till ten minutes previous. The argument sounded good to him now, however. It put him on a higher basis with himself, in spite of the fact that it had only popped into his head while he was clicking his knife blade. He conceived a new liking for himself. “No, sir,” he continued; “I’ll stay by it.”

      “I don’t see as your stayin’ helps anything if you ain’t got nothin’ t’ feed,” was the reiterated objection.

      “Well,” Mr. Farnshaw replied, careful not to look in his wife’s direction, “I was for goin’ at first, but I’ve listened t’ you folks an’ I’ve come t’ th’ conclusion that you ain’t goin’ t’ better yourselves any. If you go East, You’ll have t’ come back here in th’ spring, or live on day’s work there—an’—an’ I’ll take my chances right here. It’s a long lane that has no turn. Grasshoppers can’t stay always.”

      “What’ll you do if all them eggs hatch out an’ eat th’ crops in th’ spring?” the new neighbour asked, determined to look on all sides of the question before he decided to give up his recently purchased farm, and glad of this opportunity to get the opinions of his fellow sufferers on that particular phase of his unexpected calamity. “What’ll you do with all that bunch of cattle, anyhow?” he added.

      “I’ll share what I’ve got with th’ stuff, an’ if part of it dies I’ll drag it out on th’ hill t’ rot; th’ rest I’ll stay by,” was the stubborn reply. “As for them eggs a-hatchin’, they’ll be good ones if they can stand a Kansas winter; they’ll do a blamed sight better’n any eggs Mrs. Farnshaw gethers in. They’d better go south.”

      This raised a laugh. The grim humour of anything, that could get away, spending a winter in Kansas, appealed to these grizzly pioneers, who struggled with the question of fuel in a country where there was little natural timber, and coal must be paid for before it was burned. But all their arguments would not turn him from his course.

      “Your wife’s turrible set on goin’, Farnshaw,” one of the men said to him as they went to the stable for their horses when the meeting broke up.

      “Women’s always wantin’ things,” was the indifferent reply. “Say, you’ve got a stack of wheat straw. What’ll you take for it?”

      In the house the sympathetic daughter helped her mother prepare for bed.

      “I thought sure to-night we’d get to go,” the child said. “If you could get back East you might get to stay; and then you wouldn’t have to cry so much,” she added as she picked up the abandoned clothing her mother had left lying on the floor.

      Mrs. Farnshaw, who was turning the same matter over disconsolately as she sat on the side of the bed, shook her head with the bitter certainty that her fate would pursue her, and replied hopelessly:

      “It wouldn’t make no difference, I guess, Lizzie. He’d be there, an’ it’d be just the same.”

      And the girl, who was naturally reflective, carried with her to the loft overhead that night a new idea: that it was not the place, but the manner in which lives were lived, which mattered.

      The preparations for the coming of that winter were the strangest ever witnessed in a farming community. Never had any man known fuel to be so scarce. Cornstalks, which were usually staple articles for fuel in that country, had been eaten almost to the very ground, but the stubs were gathered, the dirt shaken from them, and they were then carted to the house. Rosin weeds were collected and piled in heaps. The dried dung of cattle, scattered over the grazing lands, and called “buffalo chips,” was stored in long ricks, also, and used sparingly, for even this simple fuel was so scarce as to necessitate care in its use.

      To keep out the driving winds, 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 not even furnish the oil necessary to lay their feathers smooth, much less foster the growth of eggs.

      Josiah Farnshaw secretly questioned the propriety of having remained in that desolate territory when, as spring approached, the shrunken cows died one after another in giving birth to the calves which had matured in their slowly perishing bodies, but he made no sign or admission of the fact.

      It was a season of gloom such as our frontier states had never known, and to add to the general depression there was a growing conviction that the hatching of the grasshoppers’ eggs when warm weather came would complete the famine.

      To support his action in refusing to go East, Josiah Farnshaw asserted stubbornly that the frost of their hard winter would certainly kill the larvae of the locusts. So persistent was his attitude that at short intervals throughout the entire winter rumours that “th’ hopper eggs is dead ’s doornails” stirred the community and set its members to making tests in a vain endeavour to establish their truth. Pieces of earth, honeycombed with the tiny nests, would be placed near the fire and kept at as regular a degree of warmth as possible, the condition of the eggs would be noted carefully, and in a short time the hopes of the anxious pioneers would be dashed to the ground by wriggling little insects climbing cheerfully out of their winter quarters and hopping about in a vain search for something green to live upon. Often, in sheer desperation, the harassed settler would sweep the hatching brood into the fire, remarking as he did so, “Burnin’s too good for such pests,” and always fear gripped the heart. If the crops in spring were eaten, other homes must be sought, and all knew that the weakened horses were unfit for travel. In fact, no team in that entire country was fit to travel far or fast, except the two which Mr. Farnshaw groomed and fed so carefully for the sake of the spring work and the much desired colts.

      The depression and worries of the Farnshaw home increased the spirit of contention and distrust of its guardians. The husband daily grew surlier and more unpleasant and the wife more lachrymose and subject to “spells.” The children learned to avoid the presence of either parent as much as possible, and to look outside the home for the joy childhood demands. The chores were heavy and difficult, but could