He was, as it happened, not the only person who noticed this, for other people who had at different times suffered severely in pocket from the vagaries of the climate had arrived at much the same opinion that afternoon, with more or less uneasiness according to their temperament. The wheat was everywhere standing tall and green, and the season had been on the whole so propitious that from bitter experience they almost expected a change. As the small cultivator has discovered, the simile of a beneficent nature is a singularly misleading one, for the stern truth was proclaimed in ages long ago that man must toil with painful effort for the bread he eats, and must subdue the earth before he can render it fruitful. In the new West he has made himself many big machines, including the great gang-plows that rip their multiple furrows through the prairie soil, but he still lies defenseless against the fickle elements.
Elcot Hunter, at least, was anxious that night as he sat in the general living-room of his homestead opposite his wife. She was not greatly interested in the book she held, and she glanced at him now and then as he sat poring over a newspaper which was noted for its crop and market reports. They afforded Hunter very little satisfaction, for they made it clear that the West would produce enough wheat that season to flood an already lifeless market.
The windows of the room were open wide, and the smell of sun-baked soil damped by the heavy dew came in with the sound made by the movements of a restless horse or two. The fall of hoofs appeared unusually distinct. The wooden house, which had lain baking under a scorching sun all day, was still very hot, but the faint puffs of air which flowed in were delightfully cool, and at length Florence, who was very lightly clad, shivered as one that was stronger than the rest lifted a sheet of Hunter's paper.
"It is positively getting cold," she remarked.
"Cold?" returned Hunter. "I wouldn't call it that."
He resumed his reading, and three or four minutes had slipped by when Florence turned to him with irritation in her manner.
"Haven't you anything to say, Elcot?" she broke out. "Are those crop statistics so very fascinating?"