There were many families in the same position. Get out? Where? How?
One day when Chris Christopherson came in I asked him why he thought the water supply would be better in a year or so.
"We can dig better dams. If they bane twice so big this year, they be full now from the snows and rains. We would yet have water plenty."
"We could dig cisterns, couldn't we?"
"Cost money, but not so much like deep wells. Trouble bane we not have money yet nor time to make ready so many t'ings."
"Some of the farmers say," I told him, "that when we cultivate large areas, loosening the soil for moisture absorption, they will be able to get surface wells, especially in the draws. They say the tall, heavy grass absorbs the surface and underground water."
Chris nodded thoughtfully. "Water will be more comin' in time," he declared. "The more land plowed, the more moisture will go down in the soil. It all the time costs more money to move and settle yet than to stay where you are. And nobody knows what he find somewhere else again."
And we got thirstier and thirstier. "I've got to have a drink," I would wail.
"You'll get over it," Ma would assure me.
But we did not always get over it. I remember trying to go to bed without a drink one night and thinking I could not stand it until morning. In the middle of the night I woke Ida Mary.